The Eighth Witch (4 page)

“Is that why they’re being killed off, do you think?” Norton said.

“Killed off? What do you mean?” Carter said.

“Take no notice of him, Rob,” Annie said. “Henry’s just being controversial.”

“Come on, Annie. You’re not another ostrich,” Norton said. He turned to Carter. “People in this town have a habit of burying their heads in the sand, Robert. I thought, when Annie invited you here, she might be one of the more enlightened ones. Obviously I was mistaken.”

“Would somebody mind explaining to me what you’re talking about?” Carter said. “Annie?”

Annie looked flushed. She was glaring at Norton furiously. “What Henry is talking about, Rob, is a series of unexplained deaths in the valley.”

“How many deaths?” he said.

“Six and counting,” Norton said. “All incomers.”

“Over what period of time?”
 

“Over the last eleven years,” Penny said. “One every two years or so. And Henry’s right. The victims are all incomers.”

Carter took a sip of brandy. “And you believe the locals are killing them off?” He couldn’t resist a smile.

“No!” Annie said vehemently. “The idea’s preposterous.”

“Yes,” Carter said. “It is. But you think the deaths are related?”

“I’m starting to think they are.”

“So am I,” Penny Chapman said. “Adam thinks so too, don’t you, hun?”

Adam Chapman nodded.
 

“Eleven years is quite a wide time-frame,” Carter said. “What do the police think? Are they linking the deaths?”

“I’m not sure they are,” Annie said. “Each of them is different, you see. Three of them are apparent suicides. The other three… Well, they’re just odd, inexplicable.”

“Odd?” Carter said.

“I think you ought to tell your friend about the nature of the deaths,” Norton said.

“Henry! I said I’d handle this my own way. Stop interfering.”
 

“I’m not interfering,” Norton said. “I’m simply tired of dancing around the subject. You brought Robert here for a reason. I think it’s only fair you tell him what the reason is.”

“Annie?” Carter said.

Annie Ryder looked at him helplessly. “I’m sorry, Rob,” she said.

“I see.” Carter finished his brandy and helped himself to another. Events had taken a turn he had not been prepared for, and his first instinct was to go upstairs, grab his bag and head on home as fast as he could. He was furious with Annie.

“If you want to go, Rob, I fully understand,” she said. “I haven’t been entirely up front with you.”

The others around the table were staring at Carter expectantly, waiting for some kind of reaction. He sipped at the brandy and tried to gather his thoughts. Finally he said, “I think you should tell me everything, Annie. Don’t you?”

“You mean you’re staying?” Norton said. There was a look of incredulity on his face. “Even though you’ve been dragged here under false pretenses?”

“I’d hardly call it that,” Carter said. “Annie and I go back a long way. She was always there for me when I needed her. This is just repaying the favor.”

The expression on Norton’s face softened. “Then I think I owe you an apology,” he said. “I’ve been behaving like an asshole.” He turned to Annie. “You were right about him. I should have trusted your judgment.” He stuck out his hand for Carter to shake. “No hard feelings?”

Carter took his hand, shook it. “No hard feelings,” he said.

“Good.” He poured himself a port and leaned back in his seat.

Carter looked at each of them in turn. “Now, would somebody mind telling me what all this is about?”

Chapter Four

“The first person to die was Helen Brown,” Annie said. “She was headmistress at the school when I joined. She gave me my first job in Ravensbridge. I thought she was very brave, taking a chance on a Yank to teach the local children English, but she was very supportive and if there was any flak flying about, none of it reached me.”

“How did she die?” Carter said.

“She hanged herself in the school gymnasium, from the climbing bars. The school caretaker found her on the Saturday morning. There was a soccer match on and he’d gone to the storage cupboard in the gym to fetch the ball and corner flags. According to the post mortem, she’d hanged herself on the Friday evening, not long after school ended.”

“So it was suicide,” Carter said.

“That was the finding of the coroner at the inquest.”

“I can tell from the tone of your voice that you didn’t agree with the verdict.”

Annie shook her head. “In the two years Helen was my boss I got to know her pretty well and she wasn’t the type to commit suicide. Plus the fact there was no note. Nothing to explain why she’d decided to take her own life.

“I know for a fact that at that particular time she was very happy. She’d not long met a man and was very keen on him, as he was on her. There was even talk of marriage. But the inquest came and went, the verdict was reached and that was the end of the matter. That was in 1999. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that there was another death.”

“Another suicide?” Carter said.

Annie nodded. “Another death and another inquest with an unsatisfactory verdict,” she said.

“Susan Grant was twenty-nine years old, two small children and a loving husband. She was in the garden when she rammed a hosepipe down her throat and turned on the outside tap. They found her sitting in a deckchair, drowned in the middle of the lawn. At the inquest the coroner recorded a verdict of suicide.”

“And you don’t think it was?” Carter said.

“Again there was no note. According to family and friends, she wasn’t depressed in any way. She had an incredibly loving relationship with her husband and she doted on her kids. She was a young woman with everything to live for. Why would she kill herself?”

Carter shrugged. “None of us see what goes on behind closed doors. Maybe the assessment of her family and friends was wrong. She may have been deeply troubled and nobody knew.”

“It doesn’t explain how they found her in a deckchair in the middle of the lawn,” Adam Chapman said. “The tap providing water to the hose was twenty yards away. What did she do? Shove the hosepipe down her throat, turn on the tap, calmly walk to the center of the lawn with gallons of water pumping into her and then settle herself down in the deckchair to die?”

“She could have kinked the hose,” Carter said. “Folded it so the water was blocked, turned on the tap and then walked to the deckchair. She sits down, swallows the pipe and then un-kinks it, letting the water through. That would work.”

“I suppose,” Adam said grudgingly. “But you’ve got to admit it’s pretty far-fetched.”

“I agree, it’s not the most obvious way to kill yourself, but it’s effective.”

Norton was watching the exchange, a look of wry amusement playing on his lips.

“What about Sylvia Allyn?” Annie said. “She was nearly decapitated by an electric hedge trimmer, for Christ’s sake. That wasn’t even an apparent suicide.”

“What was it then?” Carter said.

“The verdict was accidental death. They reckon she fell from the ladder while cutting the hedge and the hedge trimmer fell on her.”

“Accidents happen all the time,” Carter said.

“It was no accident, I’m sure.”

“I take it the police investigated. Did they find evidence to suggest that someone else was involved?”

“No, but…”

“I’m sorry. Can we change the subject now?” Holly Ireland said suddenly. They all turned to look at her but she was staring down at the table, avoiding their eyes.

“But Rob needs to hear this, Holly, if he’s going to decide whether to investigate or not,” Annie said gently.

“I told you on the way over that this was how the evening could go,” Norton said.

“And I told you that I’d rather stay on the boat if it was going to pan out this way,” Holly snapped back at him. She turned to Annie. “I’m sorry, Annie, I really appreciate the invite. You’ve been one of the few people in the town to make me feel welcome since I arrived. But I can’t do this.” She got to her feet. “I’m sorry. Goodnight, everyone.”

“Holly! Wait!” Norton said, but Holly was already up the stone staircase. They heard the front door shut.

“Don’t you think you’d better go after her, Henry?” Annie said. “We didn’t mean to upset her.”

Norton shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself, Annie. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t any of you,” he said, encompassing the table. “This subject really bothers her. She has nightmares about it. I don’t suppose I help any. I tend to use her as a sounding board for my own theories. She probably feels she can’t get away from it.”

“Poor girl,” Annie said. “I’ll call her tomorrow to apologize.”

“You’ll do no such thing. Holly needs to grow up a little and join the real world. She should apologize to you…and I’ll make sure she does. Ruining a perfectly good dinner party. Silly girl.”

“Silly girl or not, Henry,” Penny said, “you should still go after her. I wouldn’t want to walk alone along the canal towpath at this time of night.”

For a moment Carter thought the professor might argue the point, but then Norton’s shoulders sagged and he nodded. “I suppose you’re right.” He turned to Carter. “We’ll have to do this another time—when Holly’s not around.”

“I think we’d better be making a move ourselves,” Penny said. “I’ll get your coat, Adam.”
 

“But we’ve hardly begun,” Annie said.

Penny looked from her to Carter. “Oh, I think we have,” she said. “I told you this wasn’t such a brilliant idea, Annie. It was wrong of you to involve Rob in this. It’s our business. We’ll handle it ourselves.”

Henry Norton was on his feet, swaying very slightly. Carter hadn’t noticed him drinking excessively, but there was no doubt that alcohol was getting the better of him.

“We’ll walk with you to the canal, Henry,” Penny said, taking his arm. “Thanks for a lovely evening, Annie. And it was good to meet you, Rob.”

“Likewise,” Carter said.
 

When Annie came back down from seeing them out Carter had the kettle on and was making coffee. “Want some?” he asked.

“Not for me,” she said. “If I have caffeine now I’ll be bouncing off the walls all night.”

“You don’t mind if I do?”

“No, please. While you’re here, treat the place as your own. I don’t stand on ceremony.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Actually, I’m heading home in the morning.”

“Ah,” she said. “Look, Rob, I’m sorry. I should never have invited you here with all this going on.”

“But that’s just it, Annie. I can’t see that there’s anything going on. Six deaths over the space of eleven years, and three of them suicides. It’s not exactly out of the ordinary.”

“It is for Ravensbridge.”

“You’re telling me that people don’t die in this part of the world?”

“Of course they do…but not in such extraordinary circumstances. Thanks to Holly the conversation ended. I didn’t get a chance to tell you about the other deaths.”

“And with all due respect, Annie, I don’t want to hear about them.” He poured boiling water onto the instant coffee in the mug, added a spoonful of sugar and a splash of milk.

“I see,” Annie said.
 

“No. You think you see, but you don’t, and that’s probably my fault. I tend not to talk about my job and I don’t intend to go into details now. What I will say is that the past few years have been hellish. I’ve lost a number of good friends, and almost been killed twice. I’ve been up against some of the most evil forces I’ve ever encountered, and now I find myself totally depleted. I’m knackered, Annie. I needed this break to help me recharge my batteries, and to help me try to forget some of the horrors I’ve seen. I couldn’t get involved in another investigation, even if I wanted to. I’m completely drained, mentally exhausted. There’s nothing left. It’s as if someone’s switched me off. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think I do. I remember the state you were in when you left Kansas. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. Penny was right. We should never have involved you. I just thought…”

“Don’t apologize, Annie. You weren’t to know. You did what you thought was right. I’m just sorry I can’t help you but, as I said, I’m burnt out. Now if you don’t mind I’ll take my coffee to bed.”

Annie sat back down in her chair and surveyed the aftermath of the dinner party—dirty dishes, empty wine bottles, the half-liquefied, ruined remains of her Pavlova. “Screw it,” she said. “The washing up can wait ’til morning.”

Norton said goodbye to the Chapmans at the top of the slope leading down to the canal. They’d seen no sign of Holly. “Don’t worry,” he said to them as they headed off towards their house. “She’s probably tucked up in bed with a book by now. Goodnight.” He gave a mock salute and walked down the slope to the towpath.
 

There was a bitter, easterly wind blowing along the length of the canal, rippling the surface of the water, and making it lap against the hulls of the narrow boats moored along the bank. He loved this part of the world—the complete antithesis of San Francisco where he’d grown up—but he had to admit that sometimes Ravensbridge and Yorkshire in general could be astonishingly bleak. Tonight was one of those times.