He stepped from behind the table. “That concludes my talk. I hope you are reassured and will sleep peacefully tonight. I certainly intend to, and I have spent more time on these legends than most.”
The reception he was given was gratifying. Pearl Staniforth, smiling this way and that as she clapped, prolonged it by at least ten seconds.
And there was a curious effect when the clapping died, because the storm outside had just broken over Odstock and the beating of rain on the roof appeared to sustain the applause. While the downpour continued no one was eager to leave, so the speaker invited questions.
A man at the back of the hall got up. He was one of the committee; earlier he had taken the money at the door. “What a wonderful talk, sir — a fitting subject for the occasion, and so eloquently delivered. I can’t remember applause like that. Just one question, sir. I don’t know if it was deliberate, only when you were discussing the evidence for the curse, you omitted to mention the gypsy’s warning about the church door. What are your views on that?”
“I apologize,” said Staniforth at once. “An oversight. I didn’t mean to ignore it. The story goes that in the years since the curse was made, two people locked the door and suffered the promised fate within a year. But one is bound to ask how many hundreds, or thousands, must have turned the key and survived. You are up against statistical probability, you see.” He smiled, a shade too complacently.
“No, sir,” said the questioner in his broad south Wiltshire tones. “With respect, you’re misinformed. The door has been locked twice since the curse, and only twice in almost two hundred years. The first time was in 1900, in defiance of the curse, when a carpenter was employed to make new gates. He was given the story, but he mocked it, turned the key and paid the price within the twelvemonth. They buried him under the path, between the gates he made and the door he locked. The second time was in the 1930s, when a locum was appointed while the rector was away. This locum dismissed the story as blasphemous and locked the door to uphold the power of the Lord, as he saw it. He was gathered shortly after. When the rector returned, he threw the key into the River Ebble just across the road and the church has never been locked since.”
Deflated, Staniforth said, “I’m obliged to you. I stand corrected then, but I’d still like to see paper evidence of the two alleged deaths.”
“If it didn’t happen, why would the rector throw the key away?”
“Oh, the church rejects superstition as much as modern science does. No doubt he thought it the best way to put an end to such foolishness.”
Happily for Staniforth the questioner was too polite to pursue the matter. The questions turned to the safer topic of witchcraft and after ten minutes a vote of thanks was proposed, coupled with the suggestion that as the rain had eased slightly it might be timely to call the evening to a halt.
For Tom Staniforth it had scarcely begun.
Old Walter Fremantle had invited the Staniforths back to his cottage for supper, not a prospect Tom relished, although he felt some obligation for the sake of his late father. Piers Staniforth and Walter Fremantle had gone through Cambridge together as history students and remained close friends even after their careers had diverged. Walter had become a museum curator and Piers a nationally known television archaeologist until his death abroad in the 1960s. From things Pearl had let slip occasionally it seemed that Walter had helped them financially after Piers died.
“Your father would have been so proud tonight,” Pearl enthused while Tom cringed with embarrassment. “You had that audience in the palm of your hand — didn’t he, Walter?”
“Oh, emphatically,” said Walter, as he tried to pour brandy with a tremulous hand.
Tom offered to help. It was a case of all hands to the pump. Already his mother had supervised the microwave cooking and he had served the soup and the quiche. And it tasted good. Convenience food — but less of a risk than home cooking by a seventy-five-year-old bachelor.
They had not been settled long in deep armchairs in front of the fire when Walter launched into a confession. Frail as he appeared, he was still articulate and there could be no doubt that what he told Tom and his mother was profoundly important to him. “Your talk tonight has stirred me to raise a matter that has troubled me for many years. I didn’t know you were an expert on the curse — didn’t even realize you would mention it. Up to now I have hesitated to bring up the subject, mainly, I think, because I am a coward by nature.”
“Far from it, Walter!” Pearl strove to reassure him.
Mother, will you shut up? thought Tom.
“It concerns Piers, your father. It was, I think, in 1962, towards the end of his life, that he came to see me for lunch one day. He was between expeditions, as I recall, just back from Nigeria and about to leave for South America in two or three weeks.”
“Our life was like that,” Pearl now chose to reminisce. “I scarcely saw him unless I went on the digs. I could have gone. The television people would have paid for me, but it was the travel, the packing and the unpacking. I was weary of it.”
“Mother, Walter is trying to tell us something.”
“Does that mean the rest of us have to be silent? It was never like that in the old days, was it, Walter?”
Walter gave a nod and a faint smile. “We were back from lunch and unpacking some of the objects Piers had generously brought back from Africa to present to the museum when I was phoned from downstairs and told that a woman had come into the museum and wished to donate an item to the local history collection. I’m afraid one gets all sorts of rubbish brought in and I was sceptical. This lady was apparently unwilling to return at some more convenient moment. However, Piers, ever the gentleman, insisted that I speak to her, so I invited her up to my office. The woman who presently came in was a gypsy, dressed like Carmen herself in a black skirt, white blouse and red shawl, which was most unsuitable because she was sixty at least, and large. I’ve nothing personal against such people, but she struck me immediately as someone I didn’t care to deal with. My guess was that she wished to sell me something.”
“They always do,” said Pearl, “and if you don’t buy they spit on your doorstep and give you the evil eye.”
“Is that so? In fact, this person, who wouldn’t give her name, incidentally, made herself a nuisance in another way, by relating the legend of the Odstock curse, at interminable length.”
“How tedious,” said Pearl, without much tact.