“I was familiar with the story,” said Walter, “and I tried to tell her as much, but she would insist on giving us her version, which she claimed was gypsy lore. At another time I might have been more inclined to listen, because there is a lot of interest in preserving oral folklore, but my time with Piers was precious and she was invading it. Piers was extremely patient and good-mannered about the whole thing. I think it interested him.”
“What was behind it?” Pearl asked.
“Mother, Walter is coming to that.”
“Well, I’ve no need to keep you in suspense,” said Walter. “She produced an iron key, heavily coated with rust, from under her shawl and placed it on my desk. Her son, she said, had found it on the river bank during the summer when the water level went down several feet. As a true Romany she knew it to be the cursed key of Odstock Church.”
“Good Lord! And she expected you to buy it?”
“She was making a gift of it to the museum. She said she wouldn’t offer it to the church in case someone tried to defy the curse. She said it would be safer in a display cabinet in a museum. I asked her if she seriously believed that the so-called curse was still potent. She gave me a look fit to shatter my skull and said that Joshua Scamp himself would deal with anyone so foolish as to lock the church door.”
“The hanged man?”
“Yes. The curse is everlasting.”
“Are you saying she actually believed that Scamp had some influence in the world of the living?”
“My dear boy, it’s the gypsy version of the tale. I thought it poppycock myself.”
“Exactly the point I was about to make,” said Tom. “You were being asked to believe in a malevolent spirit, as well as the curse. There are limits.”
Walter nodded. “That was my view when she presented me with the key. After she had finally been persuaded to leave, Piers asked me how much of the story I believed and I told him it was no doubt founded on a real incident that had been much embroidered over the years. Piers asked whether I proposed to display the key in the museum and I said certainly not. It seemed to me unlikely in the extreme that a key recovered from the river would be the very one that the rector had thrown in thirty years ago. Piers was more cautious in delivering a verdict.”
“That’s Piers all over,” Pearl commented with a smile.
“My point was that we had nothing with which to authenticate the key except the gypsy woman’s assertion. I said the only way to test it was to take the damned thing to the church and see if it fitted the lock. Piers advised me most adamantly not to take such a risk. He said the woman had impressed him and the power of the gypsies should never be under-estimated. We had an amiable dispute. I remember accusing him of superstition and he said he’d rather be superstitious and safe than sceptical and dead.” Walter hesitated and stared into the fire. Some of the rain was penetrating the chimney and hissing as the droplets touched the embers.
Tom asked, “Did you ever try the key in the door?”
Walter turned and Tom noticed that his eyes were suddenly moist and red at the edges. “Yes, I did. It was from vanity, really. I wanted the satisfaction of telling my old friend that I had been right. I rose early the very next day, determined to prove my point. I was ninety per cent sure the key wouldn’t fit, but if it did, I’d display it in my local collection with a note about the execution of Joshua Scamp and its aftermath. I remember it was a glorious morning and the rooks in the tall trees outside seemed to be chorusing me as I walked up the path to the door of St Mary’s.”
Pearl said impatiently, “Did it fit?”
“Oh, yes. It turned the mechanism inside. The bolt engaged. Only briefly, because I turned it back in the same movement. I was shaking at the discovery.”
“Remarkable.”
“And you lived to tell the tale,” Tom said robustly to the old man.
“Well done, Walter! You struck a blow for rational thought. What happened to the key? Did you put it on display?”
“It’s in front of you, hanging on that nail over the fireplace.”
Tom looked up at the notorious key, a rusty, corroded thing with a shank no longer than his smallest finger. It appeared innocuous enough. “May I handle it?”
“Please don’t.”
“It doesn’t frighten me in the least.”
“No. For God’s sake hear me out.”
“I thought you’d finished.”
Walter shook his head. “Bear with me. This is painful. A month or so after trying the key in the door, I was afflicted with physical symptoms I couldn’t account for. I became weary after no exertion at all and I lost weight steadily. My doctor put me through no end of tests. I had a full body scan. Everything. There was nothing they could diagnose, yet anyone could see I was wasting away. It was obvious to me that I wouldn’t see the year out unless some miracle reversed the process. I kept remembering how I had defied the curse and locked the church door.”
“It wouldn’t have been that,” said Tom. “Whatever was amiss with you, it wouldn’t have been that.”
“May I continue?” said Walter quietly. “One morning I was shopping in Salisbury and a woman approached me and asked if I would buy a sprig of heather for good luck. She was the gypsy who had presented me with the key. I said I needed all the good luck that was going and told her what I had done. She hadn’t recognized me, I had lost so much weight. She was visibly shocked by what I told her. I’m afraid I was feeling so wretched that I begged for her help. I offered her any money if she would help me to lift the curse. She could name the sum. She would accept nothing, not even a silver coin for the heather. She said my only chance was to wait for All Soul’s Night — Halloween — and then to invoke the spirit of Joshua Scamp by chanting his name three times. I was so desperate about my health that I was perfectly willing to try, but the rest of her advice was more difficult. I had to find a believer in the curse and speak that person’s name aloud.” His voice was faltering. “The curse would then be lifted from me and transferred.”
Pearl’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, my God!”
Tom felt his muscles tighten.
The old man said, “Yes, I thought of Piers. I remembered how he had almost pleaded with me not to try the key in the church door. He was a believer. In the few days left before Halloween, I wrestled with my conscience, telling myself it was all hocus-pocus anyway and Piers was an ocean away in South America. How could the shade of a dead gypsy who had never travelled out of England trouble a modern man in Peru? Yet I still hesitated. If I had not felt so wretchedly ill I would not have taken the risk. When you are reduced to shaking skin and bones, you will try anything. So on the night of Halloween, thirty years ago this night, I did as the gypsy advised. When I had three times invoked the spirit of Joshua Scamp, I spoke the name of my oldest friend.” Walter bent forward and covered his eyes.
“What happened?”
His answer came in sobs. “Nothing. Nothing that night. For a week... no change. Then... the second week, my appetite returned... I felt stronger, actually recovering.” He looked up, weeping uncontrollably. “In three months I was back to my old weight. The only thing I wanted was a postcard from my old friend in Peru.” He paused in an effort to control his emotions and added, barely audibly, “It never came. I heard one evening on the television news about the mud-slip, the fatal accident to Piers. Devastating. What can I say to you both? Through my selfishness you lost a husband and a father.”
Before Pearl could respond, Tom said gently but firmly, “Walter, it’s typical of your generosity to tell us this, and I’m sure it seemed to make sense to you at the time, but really it’s a misconstruction of events. It doesn’t bear analysis. I’m sure I speak for Mother when I say you can sleep easy in the knowledge that you had nothing whatsoever to do with Dad’s death. It was an accident.”