The Guardian Stones (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

The village pub was dark inside by the time Tom Green finished his patrol.

He let himself in the back door and, flicking on his torch, went up the steep stairs to the room he was renting. The treads squeaked in the oppressive silence. He could hear his own labored breathing. He noted with some satisfaction that his foot ached. No, it would be impossible for him to serve in the forces, despite what anyone might say.

He could see a thin line of light beneath Violet's door. Was she afraid to sleep in the dark? He couldn't blame her. It wasn't safe for little girls right now in Noddweir.

Staccato snores emanated from the Gowdys' bedroom. Lying in his room at night, Green speculated on whether it was Duncan or Meg who snored. It sounded coarse, more like a man than a woman, but could he really tell a man's snores from a woman's?

Redheads attracted Green. Was it Meg who snored? Unfortunately her affections were accounted for and he knew enough not to play with women someone else had already bagged. Especially when he wanted to stay on the good side of that someone else.

As he stepped into his room he saw a pale rectangle lying on the floor by the door.

A piece of writing paper. When he picked it up he smelled faint perfume.

He shone his light on the paper. The handwriting on it looked feminine, every letter sprouting exotic blooms of loops.

“Meet me at the Guardian Stones after midnight,” the note said.

There was no signature.

Green's mouth curved into a wide, smug smile. “Ha!” he said to himself. “Ha! You can't fool Tom Green. I knew you fancied me.”

He closed his eyes, put the note to his nose, and inhaled the perfume.

Then he went back out. He had forgotten all about red hair. Grace's glossy, thick dark hair struck him as infinitely more desirable. He imagined himself pressing his lips to her rosy cheeks, running a hand along her wide hips.

He sensed she was about to admit her attraction to him when that ancient, meddling lodger of hers had interfered. He should have given the old man a thrashing. What business was it of his what Tom and Grace did?

The path through the forest to the stone circle did not feel as foreboding as it had when he'd reluctantly taken it earlier to check Jack Chapman's incoherent report. Nevertheless he purposely tramped along, snapped off twigs that got in his way, muttered to himself, creating a tiny pocket of comforting noise in the enormous silence.

Just as he reached the place where the path began to climb steeply enough for him to feel it in his withered foot a weird sound stopped him cold.

He wasn't sure what it was, but the sound had penetrated through the noise he was making.

He stood frozen. His stomach seemed to turn inside out.

The sound came again. A sobbing, almost human but not quite, hollow as an echo.

“Bloody hell!”

Again the eerie call filled the dark forest. There was nothing to see except amorphous black shapes of vegetation against the slightly lighter sky that showed through in isolated spots.

“Whooo…whoooo…”

An owl, he realized.

Owls were creatures that for him existed only in books, like elves and fairies. Of course, he knew owls were real enough but he had never expected to hear one.

He took a deep breath, belched—which seemed to put his stomach right side out again—and continued on.

He concentrated on what awaited him at the top of the hill. Grace. And how much of Grace? A girl didn't invite a man to meet her in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night for a peck on the cheek, did she?

The path bent around a limestone outcrop, pale in the blackness. For a moment, from the angle of the turn, he could see a flickering light at the top of the hill.

“Already there and waiting for me, are you? Done playing hard to get, then, and as ready as I am!”

He pushed upwards more rapidly, even though it made his foot tingle as if it were going to sleep. But when he emerged from the wall of vegetation surrounding the crown of the hill, the light had vanished.

A low hanging moon spilled an icy radiance across the stones. Had it been moonlight he'd seen?

No, the light he glimpsed had been warmer, more orange.

He straightened his shoulders and strode across the clearing to the stone circle, taking care not to stumble.

He didn't see her.

Was she hiding behind one of the stones?

Not likely unless she had decided to lie down for him already.

None of the stubby rocks looked big enough to hide a fully grown woman. He'd seen more impressive rubble in bomb craters.

Stupid superstitious country bumpkins. What did they find frightening about a bunch of little rocks? They ought to see some of the sights he had in Liverpool. And who said anyone had put them there? Some professor somewhere. Was it so surprising rocks had ended up in a circle by chance? That was the trouble with them who were overeducated. They thought too much about the wrong things.

Look at the geezer staying with Grace, he told himself. Twisting his brain in knots fretting about stones in the forest. If I was living under the same roof with Grace, rocks would be the last thing I'd be thinking about. Not that Grace wouldn't laugh in the old man's face if he were to have a go at her, but if it were me, I'd chance it.

Green walked into the circle and felt foxgloves nudging his legs.

He didn't see Grace, but the light had told him she was nearby.

“Come on out, Grace,” he called. “Don't be playing silly buggers with me.”

There was no reply.

Silence closed in around him.

Glancing around, he saw scratches on the stone nearest him. Clearly illuminated by the moonlight, what the strange symbols meant he couldn't say. He ran his fingers over them. They weren't deep and looked fresh. Were they some of those signs left by tramps that only they could read? A message saying something like “easy pickings in the village”? More likely it was the work of an idle kid messing about up here.

Green stood up. “I know you're having me on, Grace. Come on out!”

He heard a soft rustle behind him. His lips curved into a wide smile as he turned.

“Grace?”

***

The circled stones stand stark and silent in the dead white moonlight. Like the moon they are only partly illuminated, their shadowed sides, where the light does not reach, sketched in by the eye, but actually invisible, merely imagined.

It is possible to imagine taller stones, more upright, less weathered.

Someone or something leaves the stones. From a distance it is only a moving shadow, flickering into and out of existence, as it is obscured and then reappears in ragged gaps in the black tangled brambles.

Something has happened here.

Something abhorrent?

Or something perfectly right?

It might well be Grace leaving the circle.

Or anyone.

Its passage is indicated merely by a shadow.

Chapter Twenty-five

Tuesday, June 17, 1941

Grace was making fried bread when Edwin came down to breakfast. He looked dubiously at the slices sizzling in the grease when she asked him if he would like an egg with them.

When in Noddweir, he thought, and accepted both.

To his surprise he enjoyed the crisp browned bread.

“You're not having any, Grace?”

“Not too hungry.”

“You look tired.” In fact, she looked as if she'd been up all night. Purple smudges underlined her eyes. She looked ten years older, but, even so, more than young enough to be his daughter.

Edwin hadn't slept. He had been forced against his will to relive the moment of Elise's death outside the theater. Or so it had seemed as he tried vainly to suppress the memory that replayed in his mind again and again. But what would force him to view that scene that he wished never to recall? His conscience? A malign power that stalked the world? No, it was nothing more than the result of stirring up memories by confiding in Grace.

He would have welcomed a visitation from Elise's ghost. Of course he didn't believe ghosts any more than he believed in God, but then ghosts were not God. They did not require one to believe in them, did they? Her ghost could have reassured him. Would have reassured him by its very presence. If only he might have heard her voice, or deluded himself that he had heard her. Instead he realized that their happiness had not simply been cut short in that instant, but that every minute of their happiness had been stolen because now each bit of recalled joy led to the same horrific ending.

The hellish night was his deserved punishment for blurting out his innermost thoughts to a near-stranger. Be honest, Edwin chided himself, wasn't it because Grace was an attractive young woman? He had always admired British reserve. They weren't as eager as Americans to serve up steaming platters of their private angst for anyone who cared to partake. What had she made of his babbling?

He felt uneasy, almost shy, around Grace this morning. They had, in a way, been too intimate the night before.

“You haven't heard a word I've said, have you?” he heard Grace say.

She carefully poured fat from the frying pan into a blue-and-white striped bowl. “I must look a fright,” she continued. “I'm worn out because I walked too far, thinking about what might have happened to the children, and what might happen next.”

“Was that wise?”

“I walked miles but I didn't go far away. I just went up and down the streets.”

“It's as well no one spotted you. They might have been suspicious.”

Grace suppressed a yawn and Edwin had to suppress a yawn in return.

“It's cloudy now, but it'll warm up later,” Grace said. “Are you off to the stones again?”

“Yes. I've been doing some sketching and measuring.”

“What do you hope to find out?”

“I have no idea. Which is part of what makes the work so interesting. Maybe I'll end up learning nothing. If not, I will have at least documented the Noddweir stones. There isn't much information available about them.”

“They aren't exactly as well-known as Stonehenge.”

“No. In fact Reverend Wilson told me they were more or less ignored until recently, buried in brambles. He thinks the crown of the hill might only have been cleared during the last century.”

“Grandma wouldn't agree with that. She insists they've lorded it over Noddweir for eons so could hardly have been ignored. She'll say don't bother taking notes, go and wait in the middle of the circle for long enough and they'll start to talk to you.”

“Do you think so?”

“That's what she told me when I was younger, and it's what she told Isobel when she used to visit, as well as Polly. Poor Polly took it all to heart. “

“What about Isobel?”

“She was fascinated because she liked to hear stories she could use to scare the other kids.”

Edwin smiled. The night horrors receded. “Aleister Crowley would certainly be proud to hear about esoteric knowledge employed in the creation of mischief.”

“Aleister who?”

Edwin waved his hand. “Never mind. Not someone you'd care to know. I'll fetch my notebook and be off. I hope I don't find our special constable bothering you when I get back this time.”

Grace narrowed her eyes. “I'm happy to say Green's not shown up this morning. His absence is always a good start to the day.”

Edwin mopped up his yolk with the last of his fried bread. The action reminded him of seeing Joe Haywood being served egg and bacon by Meg Gowdy at the pub.

Recalling that, he mentioned not seeing Haywood since.

“He's not gone missing, more's the pity.” Grace took Edwin's plate to the sink. “He's not from Noddweir. Deals on the black market and there's talk some of the kids help him. The Finch brothers, for example. You know, delivering stuff here and there to Haywood's customers.”

“Does Green know?” Edwin asked.

“Of course he does. But he has to catch him at it, doesn't he? If he wants to, that is. If he did catch him, he wouldn't be very popular, seeing as quite a few round here deal with Haywood. A bit of extra tea or half a pound of sugar. Supposing Haywood was arrested? Then where would they get their little luxuries?”

“I suppose he's under suspicion like me?” Edwin asked. “Not being a native and all.”

“Well…” Grace paused, tea towel in hand. “Nobody knows much about him or his comings and goings, or if they do they stay quiet. But that doesn't make him a murderer.”

“Then again, these disappearances might be the work of someone who visits the area to deal with him. Criminals associate with other criminals, and if it were one of Haywood's associates that might make him an accessory.”

Grace looked pensive. “Yes, it would. But would even a black marketeer keep silent where children in danger are involved?”

It was strange how the mind worked. All night long Edwin had been tormented by the memory of Elise's death. Had wished, irrationally, that she would speak to him, and now in the day-lit kitchen, she did speak. He knew it was merely a memory. But he heard her distinctly, as she railed against the parents who should never have had children, parents to whom a night out or the next bottle of liquor was more important than their own offspring. Parents who couldn't care less whether their children lived or died.

He could not associate the tirade with any particular child she had brought home for a clean-up, a lecture, and a new pair of shoes. They all blurred together, dirty unformed little faces, wild hair, deplorable clothing. How would Elise feel about what was going on in Noddweir?

Or what was not going on so far as getting to the bottom of things?

“Do you think Green and Haywood might be working together?”

“What would make you think that?”

“You're not sure our intrepid young constable really wants to catch himself a black marketeer, are you?”

Grace wiped her hands on the tea towel “Who knows what Green wants? Except…well…”

“Is it possible Green might not have made any effort to check up on Haywood?”

“Possibly. I simply assumed he had.”

“I understand Haywood rents a house from the Wainmans.” Edwin hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Do you think it would be useful if we took a look at the place?”