“Poor little things,” said Mrs Framlington absently. She gave a start. “But how did you know about that? I only heard myself yesterday.”
“Have you not read a newspaper this morning?”
“The Sunday Times. But not all of it, of course.”
Miss Teatime put down her cup and rose to cross the room.
“An elevated taste in reading matter can be a disadvantage sometimes.”
She handed Mrs Framlington a copy of the Sunday Pictorial that had been folded back to display the headlines: “PETS EXECUTED IN CHURCH OF BLACK MASS TOWN: ‘END NUDE RITES’ DEMAND MUMS.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Mrs Framlington. She fumbled for glasses to read the smaller print.
A quarter of a mile away in the police headquarters in Fen Street, Inspector Purbright was sampling and comparing a number of newspaper stories, of which the account in the Pictorial was one. They were highly diversified in terms of reported fact, but a reader as attentive as the inspector could scarcely avoid the conclusion that all had originated in the one town of Flaxborough and purported to describe similar events.
Common to every report was the use of the words witchcraft, black, magic, mass, sacrifice and cult. In three cases, nude and orgy had been incorporated as well. Satanism was offered by the Dispatch, while the Express daringly added necromancy (“say it neck-romancee”.)
Purbright decided that the piece in the Empire News promised to be, if not the most enlightening, at any rate the most imaginative and morally pop-eyed of that morning’s contributions to what he once had heard aphoristically defined as the Anals of Journalism.
Flaxborough, Saturday.
These were the questions on everyone’s lips today in this sleepy little market town...
Does the Devil ride out to claim dupes and victims amongst their neighbours?
Who, or what, offers sacrifices of animals in their ancient parish church at dead of night and in hideous parody of Christian ritual?
Are the flitting figures that have been glimpsed in near-by woodland those of members of a witch cult taking part in the bestialities of their “Sabbath”?
And what has happened to pretty, fun-loving typist, Edna Hillyard, who has not been seen since she said goodnight to friends at a folk-dance festival on Wednesday?
Seeking answers to these questions, I have discovered that facts even more disturbing—facts that might be connected with a Voo-doo type kidnapping—have been reported to the police.
The informants have not dared give their names.
For fear stalks this quiet country town, where apple-cheeked farmers—usually ready with a friendly word or a rural quip—now turn away at the sight of a stranger and touch the silver coins in their pockets to ward off evil.
One man not afraid to talk, however, is bluff river-boatman “Yormer” Heath. Mr Heath it was whose gruesome discovery of a devil mask in the river set off police inquiries into the disappearance of attractive, vivacious folk-dancer Edna.
“Yormer” told me: “We have been stalked by fear for some time in this quiet old town. I cannot rightly put a name to what troubles us, but it is evil, evil—like that unspeakable object which I hauled out of the water.”
I asked “Yormer” Heath if he had heard any reports of the notorious Black Mass being celebrated in Flaxborough. “Definitely,” he replied.
Did he personally know of any witches in the locality?
Certainly, he did, and so did many of his friends.
Yes, there had been sacrificial rites in the parish church and other places, and he would definitely describe those responsible as fiends in human form.
And the missing girl?
“Everybody in this town loved Edna Hillyard,” declared “Yormer” Heath as he went into the dusk after answering my questions in the quaint old Three Crowns inn, “and we shall not rest until we find her.”
Purbright, pleasantly intrigued thus far, was sorry to find that the story deteriorated in the next few paragraphs to a repetitious chronicle of assertions by “a local shopkeeper”, “a clergyman”, “housewives shopping in the old Market Place” and other traditional fictions of the thwarted or bar-bound journalist. But then his interest quickened anew.
In charge of the hunt for Edna Hillyard is Detective-Superintendent R. Parbright, golden-haired seven-footer known by the criminal fraternity of this remote area of rural England as “Apollo”.
Superintendent Parbright talked to me in the Operations Room of Flaxborough Police H.Q. He said he was unaware of the townspeople’s reluctance to go out after dark because of black magic rites.
“I’m an agnostic,” the superintendent declared. He added that he did not know what was meant by the word “permissive” and said he would like to take the opportunity to deny allegations that his men went round the town breaking up adulterous associations with their truncheons.
I asked him what progress had been made in the search for Edna Hillyard.
“We are still looking for the evidence that this thirty-four-year-old good-time girl has been used as a human sacrifice,” replied Superintendent Parbright.
As he spoke, I heard somewhere in the distance the screech of an owl.
In this town of fear, even the night-birds are edgy.
The chief constable made a diversion on his way home from church in order to call at the police station. He found Purbright sitting with Sergeant Love in the general office on the ground floor. They were drinking coffee. A small avalanche of newspapers covered a desk.
Mr Chubb slowly drew off his gloves. His expression was that of a surgeon at the end of an unsuccessful operation on a particularly rich patient.
“You know, Mr Purbright, I seriously doubted at the time your wisdom in entertaining those newspaper people.”
The gloves were deposited in Mr Chubb’s bowler hat, which, with his walking stick, he placed carefully on the top of a filing cabinet. He motioned Purbright and Love to resume their seats.
“I didn’t entertain them half as lavishly as they have entertained me, sir.” Purbright nodded towards the pile of newspapers. He wondered how far down the social scale was the journal that Mr Chubb would confess to having read.
“Do not let us play with words,” admonished the chief constable. “What I mean is that all this inflammatory nonsense would never have got into print if you had refused to be interviewed. Whatever possessed you to bring up the subject of human sacrifices? My paper actually quoted you as saying something about my men going round the town with truncheons and stopping adultery. Really, Mr Purbright!”
The inspector looked shocked. “But surely, sir, The Observer hasn’t...”