The hour bell in the tower of Flaxborough Parish Church began to strike twelve. It was no longer the eve of Saint Walburga, but the morning of May Day.
The red flame in the ash grove waved erratically once or twice, then went out.
Mrs Pentatuke slowly unclenched her hands. Only later did she discover that the strong, carefully manicured nails had engraved in each palm four little blood-filled crescents.
Chapter Two
The following account appeared half-way down the third column of page five of the Flaxborough Citizen dated Friday, 2 May.
FOLK AND FUN: OLD CEREMONIES RECALLED
The quarterly “Revel” of the Flaxborough, Chalmsbury and Brocklestone Folklore Society attracted a good attendance when it was held on Wednesday in the grounds of Aleister Lodge, by kind permission of Mrs G. Gloss, OBE.
Study subject for the evening was “The Survival of Roodmas”, Roodmas being the ancient festival associated with the last day of April. A number of members brought masks and decorative articles, made by themselves, modelled on traditional examples.
The very successful dance session was led by Mr and Mrs H. Pearce, Mr and Mrs H. Hall, and Mesdames G. Gooding and F. Pentatuke. The caller was Mrs Pentatuke, who also agreed to take charge of the Devotional Half-Hour, in the absence through indisposition of Mrs H. K. Framlington, JP.
Mr G. Gooding was responsible for the erection of a tastefully decorated “quaffing bench”. Faggot-master was Mr J. Cowdrey.
The music was provided by Miss A. Parkin, who rendered selections on recorder and tabor.
Refreshment organizers: Mrs Pearce and Mr J. Bottomley.
Winner of the President’s Maypole Trophy for best living custom demonstration: Miss Edna Hillyard.
The Flaxborough Citizen was a weekly newspaper and it went to press on Thursday afternoon. Anything that happened later than lunch time but before tea on a Thursday might, if it were sensational enough, be accommodated by special dispensation of the editor and at the price of great gloom and recrimination in the machine room. Five o’clock, though, was the absolute limit. At five, the last page of metal would be locked with its fellow in their forme and trundled off to the mangle for the matrix to be pressed.
Thus it was that the paper containing the report of Miss Hillyard’s success in the Revel competition made no mention of her subsequent disappearance. For although it would not be true to say that no one missed Edna throughout Thursday, she was known to be unpredictable and quite liable to take a trip on impulse or to present herself at the home of a friend, with an off-hand yet perfectly confident request for hospitality. In the offices of her employers, Flaxborough Corporation, her periodic absences were noted with irritation but not alarm. Her landlady in Cheviot Road was used to knocking at Edna’s bedroom door without response on two or three mornings a month.
On Thursday evening, however, shortly after six, a discovery was made that could be disregarded only by the most phlegmatic among Miss Hillyard’s acquaintances.
Two boys who had climbed through a break in the hedge enclosing private woods and meadowland on the north side of Orchard Road were intrigued to see that a small, bright red car had somehow come to be parked beneath some trees. They approached it cautiously, encouraged by the remoteness of its resting place to hope for glimpsed indiscretions. But the car proved to be empty.
The older boy tried the door on the driver’s side. It opened. Something white and flimsy slipped off the seat and fell to the ground among wet dead leaves. The other pounced, trying to save what had fallen from getting dirty. He brushed it clumsily, leaving brown streaks.
“Look out, clot. You’ll have it absolutely filthy.”
The older boy snatched. He looked at what he held, then at the neat pile on the seat.
“Christ, they’re a bird’s.”
Flushing, he draped the muddied slip on the seat back. It flowed down into a heap beside the other things. He tried to make it look neat, undisturbed, by giving it a few nervous tweaks and pats, but had no success. His companion looked on impassively.
“Come on. Let’s scarpa.”
The older boy stepped back, ready to shut the car door.
The other put out a restraining hand; he was staring now at the clothing with keener interest.
“Hey, do you know what? She’s taken the flippin’ lot off. Jersey, skirt... Look, that’s her what-d’you-call it. Stockings, an’ all.” A small hesitation. “And them.” He pointed, awed.
“So what?” The older boy pushed him aside and closed the door as quietly as he could. “Come on.”
Neither, in his need to seem worldly, wanted to admit to the other the feeling of unease that the incident had roused in him. But as they walked back to the road, the younger perplexed, the older pretending nonchalance, there grew between them the unvoiced acceptance that somebody else would have to be told.
There was a telephone box near the junction of Orchard Road and Marshside Road. The older boy regarded it doubtfully, then swung the door open.
“I suppose we ought, really,” he said. “I mean, we don’t have to say who we are.”
He wiped his hands down the seams of his trousers, picked up the receiver and with great deliberation dialled nine-nine-nine.
Three minutes later, he rejoined his companion.
“Right thick one, that,” he complained. “Kept asking my name and address.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“Course not.”
“What’s he going to do about the car and that?”
“How would I know? Expect they’ll come over and take a look round. We’d better not be hanging about.”
The boys hurried round the corner and slipped into the shelter of an alley a few yards along Marshside Road. For nearly half an hour they kept watch and listened for the two-note bray of a police car. Then, hungry and disillusioned, they went their separate ways home.
They were not to know that a patrol car had happened to be at the far end of Orchard Road, beyond the crematorium, at the time of their call to police headquarters in Fen Street, and that a radio message had long since sent its crew to investigate.
The driver of the car was Constable Palethorp, a reticent, phlegmatic officer whose eyes were as expressive as holes in a blanket.
He was accompanied by a lean, restless man. Constable Brevitt always rode as passenger in the patrol car. This was a precaution ordained by his superiors. Fully aware of Flaxborough’s distinction in having on its Force an officer who would have managed splendidly and perhaps even single-handed the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, they had no wish to test the compatibility of his panache with the requirements of the Road Traffic Acts.
“Go on, Fred—clip the stupid bugger into the ditch!” urged Constable Brevitt. He glared at Palethorp, who had braked and was watching patiently an old man who had dismounted from his cycle opposite the crematorium gates and now waited, directly in their path, for an oncoming car to pass.