The Eighth Witch (18 page)

“I don’t suppose you overheard what they were talking about?” Carter said.

Joan bridled a little. “I don’t make a habit of eavesdropping on other people’s private conversations.”

“I wasn’t suggesting for one moment you do, Joan,” Carter said. “I just wondered if you caught the drift of any of the chats Edith had with Diana. It could be important.”

Mollified, Joan Maitland stroked her chin and gave it some thought. “The past mostly,” she said at last. “They talked about the past a lot. People, places, who lived where, how long they had been living there. Nothing very earth-shaking.”

“What did Diana look like?” Annie said.

Joan shook her head. “That’s another strange thing about her. I really can’t say. That sounds odd, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth. What can I say? Medium height, medium build, late twenties, early thirties.” She shook her head again, as if trying to clear it. “A chameleon. That’s the word I’d use to describe her. You see, in my head I get a clear image of her, but as soon as I focus on it and try to convey to you what she’s like, the image loses focus, gets all hazy.” She stood up from the couch suddenly. “There might be a picture, a photograph of her, somewhere.”

She went across to a cabinet in the corner and pulled open a drawer. Carter and Annie exchanged looks, both of them suspecting that this wasn’t the first time Joan Maitland had rummaged through Laura Sallis’s personal effects.

“Yes,” Joan said. “I thought so.” The hand she pulled from the drawer was clutching a brass frame. She stared at it for a moment, confusion clouding in her eyes. Whatever she was expecting to see in the frame clearly wasn’t there. “But I don’t understand…” she muttered.

Annie went across and took the frame from her. It was a fairly recent color photograph of Laura. Laura, in a woodland setting, looking relaxed and happy, leaning against a tree, her bobbed, brown hair gleaming, sunlight dancing in her chestnut eyes. Annie felt a lump form in her throat. She passed the photo to Carter.

“What is it you don’t understand?” Carter said.

Joan Maitland started at the sound of his voice, as if she’d just been brought back to reality with a bump. “The photograph,” she said. “The last time I saw it they were both in the picture. Both Laura and Diana, Laura against one side of the tree, Diana leaning against the other. Now she’s gone. Diana’s gone.”

“You’re sure it was the two of them in the photograph?” Carter said.

“Of course I’m sure!” Joan Maitland snapped back at him, her sunny disposition deserting her for a moment. She went back to the couch and sat down heavily, her head making small shaking movements, as if denying the evidence of her own eyes.

“You said earlier that Diana was evil,” Carter said. “What did you mean by that?”

“I meant evil in the truest sense. It was there in her eyes. She was always perfectly pleasant, always polite, always smiling. But she had the ability to manipulate both Laura and Edith, to twist their wills to suit her own.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s evil,” Annie said.

“I mentioned her eyes,” Joan said. “They were like cold, bottomless pools. I remember I said something to her once, some innocent remark about how she was tiring Edith out by constantly engaging her in conversation, and the look she gave me… Well, I can only describe the effect it had on me. It was like she was burrowing into my head and scrambling my thoughts, scrambling my mind. I felt waves of nausea sweeping over me, and my head began to pound. It felt as if my brain was expanding in my skull and might burst through at any moment. I blacked out and fell. Luckily Laura caught me before I could hit the floor. When I came to Diana was still staring at me. My nose had bled and I was covered in blood, and I couldn’t see or hear clearly. Everything was blurred, fuzzy. I could see Laura’s lips moving and I could read them enough to see that she was asking me if I was all right, but Diana was standing there glaring at me with those hateful eyes and I was paralyzed. It was only when she finally left the room… I think Laura told her to go, but I can’t be sure… It was only when she left the room that I started to feel better. My vision cleared and my hearing returned. I asked Laura what had happened, but all she could say was that I had fainted. I’m sorry, but I’m not the fainting type. And there was fear on Laura’s face. What happened to me…what Diana did to me, had frightened Laura to the core, I swear it.”

Carter was watching Joan Maitland closely. Just relating the incident had produced a thin film of sweat on her face. She pulled a handful of tissues from the pocket of her nylon overall and dabbed at her brow.
 

“How long after this did Laura leave?” Annie said.

“I can’t actually say. After what had happened I couldn’t bring myself to come back here. It was only when I realized I hadn’t seen Laura for a few days that I steeled myself to enter the house again. I came in to find Edith on her own and in a terrible state. I called the school, trying to trace Laura, and a nice woman, Mrs. Chapman, came round and got everything organized. She hadn’t seen Laura for days either. She hadn’t turned up at the school.”

“I know,” Annie said. “I work at the school.”

“Well you’d probably have a better idea than I when Laura actually left.”

“But how do you know Laura left with Diana?” Carter said.

Joan Maitland frowned. “I may be lots of things, Mr. Carter, but I’m not naïve. I could see that the relationship between Laura and Diana went beyond mere friendship. It was as if Laura was in the woman’s thrall, as if she was under some kind of…” She hesitated.

“Spell?” Carter said.

“Well, you used the word, not me. But, yes, that’s exactly how I’d describe it.”

The door opened and Edith stood there, supporting herself on a Zimmer frame. “Has Diana gone? I thought she’d come to see me.”

Joan Maitland pushed herself from the couch. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, and then rushed across to Edith and took her arm. “Come on, my love,” she said soothingly. “We can’t have you upsetting yourself. Come and sit down again and I’ll make us a nice pot of tea.”

Edith looked beyond her to Carter and Annie. “I miss her,” she said, her voice tremulous. “We had such lovely conversations.”

“We’ll let ourselves out,” Annie said to Joan Maitland.

“Probably for the best,” Joan said as she guided Edith Sallis back to her room.

Martin Impey had hit a brick wall investigating the leads Carter had given him. After researching the deaths in Ravensbridge he was prepared to accept there could be a tenuous link between them, but nothing concrete, and he was wondering how much more time he should devote to them.
 

He’d had a little more success with the name Elinor Yardley who, if the data he’d uncovered on the Web was to be believed, was a witch who lived in both Lancashire and Yorkshire in the 1600’s. Again the details were sketchy, but he’d discovered that Elinor was a member of the Yardley family whose history was recounted in a book written in the 1930’s by the Oxford scholar Sylvester McCutcheon.
The Yardley Sisters—First Family of Witchcraft in the North of England
was a small book, cloth-bound and privately published in a very limited edition, and long out of print. Martin’s efforts to track it down through his usual sources had come to nothing, and he was planning a trip to the British Library who, according to their vast database, had a copy on file.

He ran the idea past Simon Crozier.

“Do you think there’s a connection between the deaths and the Yardley sisters?” Crozier said, leaning back in his chair.

“There’s no evidence to suggest there is,” Martin said. “But Rob must suspect a link. Why else did he ask me to dig around?”

Crozier nodded slowly, staring thoughtfully into space. “I don’t know,” he said after a long pause. “I’m not sure we should devote any more of the department’s time to this. Our case load is not exactly light and you’ve already given up half a day and, frankly, got nowhere.”

“With all due respect,” Martin said, “I don’t think Rob would have bothered me with this unless he suspected there was something to it. I saw him a short time before he went to Yorkshire and, quite honestly, the last thing he needed was to get involved in another case. He was exhausted.”

“Okay. I accept that. But why not make it official, instead of all the cloak-and-dagger stuff? Calling you at night, asking you to ignore department policy. Sometimes I think he behaves as he does just to get under my skin, to rub me up the wrong way.”

Martin Impey suppressed a smile, knowing that there was more than an element of truth in Crozier’s assertion.

“You say the only copy of this book is in the British Library?” Crozier said.

“The only copy I’ve been able to track down. There probably are more around, but I wouldn’t know where to start looking for them.”

“Then go and take a look at it. It might shed some light.”

“I’ll go now.”

“But if it doesn’t illuminate this in some way then I’m pulling the plug. There are more pressing matters that will demand your full attention.” Crozier flipped open a file sitting on his desk and began to read.

Martin hesitated for a moment, waiting to see if his boss was going to add anything else. When he realized there was nothing more he went back to his office, telephoned the library to request the book, then pulled his coat from the rack in the corner and took a taxi down to the Euston Road, to the huge, modern red-brick building at number 96 that housed some of the greatest works of literature the world has ever known.

Twenty minutes later, as he climbed from the taxi and paid the driver, he felt a knot of excitement twisting in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t get out of the dour offices of Department 18 that often during the working day and to not only get out, but to come here of all places was a thrill. The British Library housed over fourteen million books and was quite simply, Martin thought, as he approached the stone steps leading up to the entrance, a researcher’s paradise.
 

He was about to walk through the bronze gates of the building when his mobile phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and flipped it open. Someone had sent him a text.

Enter here and you’ll never leave.

A frown creased his brow as he read the message again. There was no number. Once back at the office he could probably trace who had sent it, but here he was helpless. He wanted to believe the message was a joke, but apart from Crozier the only people who knew he was coming here were his assistants, Maggie and Christine, and he couldn’t imagine either of them pulling a stunt like this.
 

The frown deepened as he closed the mobile and slipped it back into his pocket. His ebullient mood had evaporated. He walked heavily across the granite-paved plaza, barely noticing the other people there sitting on the stone benches, some of them tapping away on laptop computers, some reading, others just sitting and enjoying the ambience. The plaza had been designed as an oasis, away from the teeming London streets just yards away.
 

Martin reached the doors at the entrance of the library building and they slid open obligingly. Before he stepped inside, he took his mobile from his pocket and read the text message again.

Enter here and you’ll never leave.

He switched the phone off, snapped it shut and entered the library.

Chapter Twenty

“I feel like I never really knew Laura at all,” Annie said as they hit the street. “Even down to the music she liked to listen to. I mean, Massive Attack? The Laura I saw in that room is nothing like the Laura I used to see every day at school, the Laura I used to go drinking with at the Three Tuns.”

“I wouldn’t upset yourself about it,” Carter said. “Quite often we don’t actually know the people we think we’re closest to. We think we have them pegged, that they can offer up no surprises, and then they do something so random, so out of character, that they completely throw us.”

“Are you still seeing Jane Talbot?” Annie said.

Carter looked at her sharply.
 

“Oh, come on, Rob, I used to see you nearly every day when we were in Kansas together. I got to know you pretty well. I can tell when you’re in pain.”

“That obvious, eh?”

Annie nodded and steered him onto the canal towpath. “I remember when you first wrote to me about her. I could tell from the way you described her, the words you used, that she was someone pretty special.”

“It’s very rare, that feeling. As if you’ve only ever been half a person and then somebody comes along who makes you feel complete, whole. It was like that with Jane.”

“So what happened?”

“I could bore you to death with the details, Annie, but I won’t. Let’s just say life happened and leave it at that.”

“Is there any hope that you might get back with her?”

“Oh, there’s always hope.” He stopped walking, reached down, picked up a stone from the towpath and sent it bouncing across the torpid water of the canal. “That’s me,” he said. “Skimming across the surface of life.”

“Only connecting with it at certain points,” Annie continued for him. “I really thought that with Laura I’d found an anchor, someone to tether me, to make me feel grounded. But like you I’m skipping over life. Even more so now I’ve seen the other side of Laura…the side she kept hidden from me.” She gripped his arm urgently. “I have to find her, Rob.”