The next morning I was up early, knocked awake by my uncle’s banging at my door. “Sandy?” he called. “Are you up? I’m off into Harden, to see Mr Boulter the joiner. Can you see to your own breakfast?”
“Yes,” I called back, “and I’ll make some sandwiches to take to the beach.”
“Good! Then I’ll see you when I see you. Mind how you go. You know where the key is.” And off he went.
I spent the entire day on the beach. I swam in the tidal pools, caught small crabs for the fishermen to use as bait, fell asleep on the white sand and woke up itchy, with my sunburn already peeling. But it was only one more layer of skin to join many gone the same way, and I wasn’t much concerned. It was late afternoon by then, my sandwiches eaten long ago and the sun beginning to slip; I felt small pangs of hunger starting up, changed out of my bathing costume and headed for home again.
My uncle had left a note for me pinned to the door of his study where it stood ajar:
Sandy,
I’m going back to the village, to Mr Boulter’s yard and then to the Vicarage. I’ll be in about 9.00 p.m.—maybe. See you then, or if you’re tired just tumble straight into bed.
—Zach
P.S. There are fresh sandwiches in the kitchen!
I went to the kitchen and returned munching on a beef sandwich, then ventured into the study. My uncle had drawn the curtains (something I had never before known him to do during daylight hours) and had left his reading lamp on. Upon his desk stood a funny contraption that caught my eye immediately. It was a small frame of rough, half-inch timber off-cuts, nailed together to form an oblong shape maybe eight inches long, five wide and three deep—like a box without top or bottom. It was fitted where the top would go with four small bolts at the corners; these held in position twin cutter blades (from some woodworking machine, I imagined), each seven inches long, which were slotted into grooves that ran down the corners from top edge to bottom edge. Small magnets were set central of the ends of the box, level with the top, and connected up to wires which passed through an entirely separate piece of electrical apparatus and then to a square three-pin plug. An extension cable lay on the study floor beside the desk, but it had been disconnected from the mains supply. My last observation was this: that a three-quarter-inch hole had been drilled through the wooden frame on one side.
Well, I looked at the whole set-up from various angles but could make neither head nor tail of it. It did strike me, however, that if a cigar were to be inserted through the hole in the side of the box, and the bolts on that side released, that the cigar’s end would be neatly severed! But my uncle didn’t smoke…
I experimented anyway, and when I drew back two of the tiny bolts toward the magnets, the cutter on that side at once slid down its grooves like a toy guillotine, thumping onto the top of the desk! For a moment I was alarmed that I had damaged the desk’s finish…until I saw that it was already badly scored by a good many scratches and gouges, where apparently my uncle had amused himself doing much the same thing; except that he had probably drawn the bolts mechanically, by means of the electrical apparatus.
Anyway, I knew I shouldn’t be in his study fooling about, and so I put the contraption back the way I had found it and returned to the kitchen for the rest of the sandwiches. I took them upstairs and ate them, then listened to my wireless until about 9.00 p.m.—and still Uncle Zachary wasn’t home. So I washed and got into my pyjamas, which was when he chose to return—with Harden’s vicar (the Reverend Fawcett) and Mr Forster, and Forster’s cousin, the joiner Jack Boulter, all in tow. As they entered the house I hurried to show myself on the landing.
“Sandy,” my uncle called up to me, looking a little flustered. “Look, I’m sorry, nephew, but I’ve been very, very busy today. It’s not fair, I know, but—”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I had a smashing day! And I’m tired.” Which was the truth. “I’m going to read for a while before I sleep.”
“Good lad!” he called up, obviously relieved that I didn’t consider myself neglected. “See you tomorrow.” And he ushered his guests into his study and so out of sight. But again he left the door ajar, and I left mine open, so that I could hear something of their voices in the otherwise still night; not everything they said, but some of it. I wasn’t especially interested; I tried to read for a few minutes, until I felt drowsy, then turned off my light. And now their voices seemed to float up to me a little more clearly, and before I slept snatches of their conversation impressed themselves upon my mind, so that I’ve remembered them:
“I really can’t say I like it very much,” (the vicar’s piping voice, which invariably sounded like he was in the pulpit). “But…I suppose we must know what this thing is.”
“‘Who’,” (my uncle, correcting him). “Who it is, Paul. And not only know it but destroy it!”
“But…a person?”
“A sort of person, yes. An almost-human being.”
Then Mr Forster’s voice, saying: “What bothers me is that the dead are supposed to be laid to rest! How would Mrs Anderson feel if she knew that her coffin…” (fading out).
“But don’t you see?” (My uncle’s voice again, raised a little, perhaps in excitement or frustration.) “She is the instrument of Joe’s revenge!”
“Dreadful word!” (the vicar.) “Most dreadful! Revenge, indeed! You seem to forget, Zachary, that God made all creatures, great, small, and—”
“And monstrous? No, Paul, these things have little or nothing to do with God. Now listen, I’ve no lack of respect for your calling, but tell me: if you were to die tomorrow—God forbid—then where would you want burying, eh?”
Then the conversation faded a little, or perhaps I was falling asleep. But I do remember Jack Boulter’s voice saying: “Me, Ah’ll wark at it arl neet, if necessary. An’ divven worry, it’ll look no different from any other coffin. Just be sure you get them wires set up, that’s arl, before two o’clock.”
And my uncle answering him: “It will be done, Jack, no fear about that…”
The rest won’t take long to tell.
I was up late, brought blindingly awake by the sun, already high in the sky, striking slantingly in through my window. Brushing the sleep from my eyes, I went and looked out. Down in the cemetery the gravediggers John and Billy were already at work, tidying the edges of the great hole and decorating it with flowers, but also filling in a small trench only inches deep, that led out of the graveyard and into the bracken at the foot of the knoll. John was mainly responsible for the latter, and I focused my glasses on him. There was something furtive about him: the way he kept looking this way and that, as if to be sure he wasn’t observed, and whistling cheerily to himself as he filled in the small trench and disguised his work with chippings. It seemed to me that he was burying a cable of some sort.
I aimed my glasses at Slater’s Copse next, but the curtains were drawn in the caravan’s window and it seemed the gypsies weren’t up and about yet. Well, no doubt they’d come picnicking later.
I washed and dressed, went downstairs and breakfasted on a cereal with milk, then sought out my uncle—or would have, except that for the first time in my life I found his study door locked. I could hear voices from inside, however, and so I knocked.
“That’ll be Sandy,” came my uncle’s voice, and a moment later the key turned in the lock. But instead of letting me in, he merely held the door open a crack. I could see Jack Boulter in there, working busily at some sort of apparatus on my uncle’s desk—a device with a switch, and a small coloured light-bulb—but that was all.
“Sandy, Sandy!” my uncle sighed, throwing up his hands in despair.
“I know,” I smiled, “you’re busy. It’s all right, Uncle, for I only came down to tell you I’ll be staying up in my room.”