Dejected because her visit to the psychic's crafts shop had proved so disappointing, Eve took the path leading across the muddy lawn to the house's front door, her boots crunching on the sparse gravel. Her head was bowed, not with the physical burden of her load, but with the mental burden of her despair. She was helpless, powerless on her own to make the vital contact that she knew her lost son was seeking, unable to complete the telepathic link between them by herself. What could she do now? Consult another psychic? That would take time and there was an urgency in her that she herself did not quite understand. Somehow she knew it was important to find Cam soon, before… before it was too late… She would have to look for another psychic, then.
Perhaps irrationally, she could not face having to explain herself to Gabe. She was only too aware of his frustration with her, no matter how well he concealed it, and she feared that her endeavours now would finally end his patience with her for not coming to terms with their loss. But she would never accept it, not while there was still a chance, not when there were signs…
Eve went past the front door, making for the kitchen door instead, so deep in her own thoughts that she failed to notice Gabe standing by the table through the window. She turned the corner and laid one of the shopping bags on the step so that she could use her key, but Gabe beat her to it.
'Hey,' he greeted, reaching for the shopping bag in her hand. He took it from her, then stooped to collect the other one.
'Hi,' she returned as she stepped inside. 'Has Cally been okay? She didn't bother you while you were working?'
'She's the best, no problem at all. She's taking a nap right now.' Gabe frowned. Eve seemed to be avoiding his eyes as she unzipped her coat and hung it on the rack by the door.
'Chester?' she queried over her shoulder. 'Anything?'
'Uh-uh. Still missing.' He silently cursed himself for using the wrong word: too many connotations. 'I rang the police again, but no stray dog's been spotted or turned in,' he said quickly, to move from the 'missing' word. 'Told me they'd get their patrolman for this area to keep a lookout.'
For the first time she noticed the old gardener sitting quietly and unobtrusively on the other side of the kitchen table. She was feeling too low to be surprised.
Eve greeted him with little enthusiasm. 'Hello, Percy.'
'Missus.' He nodded his head without smiling at her. His cap was in his hands on his lap, but he hadn't removed his storm coat.
'Percy was outside working on the flowerbeds,' said Gabe, 'so I called him in to take a look at this stuff.'
Now Eve saw what was on the kitchen table. Curious, she moved closer.
A book of about the size and proportions of an accountant's ledger lay next to a long wooden stick. Its stiff black cover was dusty—someone, probably Gabe, had obviously wiped it with his hand, for there were streaks across the surface where the black was more intense. The cover's corners were wrinkled, as if battered by wear, and a label, yellow with age, had been glued onto it. Written on the label in neat capital letters that, although faded, were still legible, were the words:
PUNISHMENT BOOK
Eve realized then that the wooden stick lying next to the book was a thin bamboo cane, one end of which was split into even thinner slivers of at least six inches in length. It was the type of cane that in a different era, some teachers used to beat disobedient or unruly schoolchildren. And just in front of Percy, as if he had been studying it before Eve came in, was a creased black and white photograph. But it was the Punishment Book that really drew her attention.
'My God,' she said, 'what is this?'
Gabe waved a hand that took in all the items laid out on the otherwise unoccupied kitchen table. 'It's some interesting stuff I found earlier. Know where they were?' The question was rhetorical; he went on. 'Behind a phoney wall inside the landing closet.'
He told Eve about the now familiar noises he and Cally had heard coming from the upstairs cupboard, the loud knocking sounds, and how he had discovered the black-painted false wall that some time in the past had been used as a hideaway. 'It wasn't very deep, just enough space for the book and cane. Oh, and the photograph over there by Percy.'
Gabe picked up the cane with the split end and sliced it through the air, bringing it down hard on the black-covered book.
Swish-thwack!
Eve flinched at the harsh sound it made. Dust billowed up from the book.
Gabe lifted the bamboo cane again and this time brought it down gently onto the palm of his hand. 'See how the ends splay out when they hit. Now imagine it hard against a kid's hand, or leg, or butt. You'd have to be a sadist to use it.' There was no humour in Gabe's tight-lipped grin.
'Cribben?'
'Yeah, Augustus Theophilus Cribben. Cribben, custodian and headmaster to those evacuees back in '43. This place was supposed to be a safe haven for 'em, out of reach from those German bombs that were blitzing the big cities in the last world war. Huh! Some haven.' Gabe indicated again, this time pointing the cane at the big black book. 'S'all in there, written up, all the things he did to those kids, everything recorded in detail, dates and all.'
Percy spoke up and there was a bitterness to his words. 'The man was evil, cruel. Oh, a good Christian all right, an' highly thought of by some in these parts. But they didn't know, not the authorities, nor our own vicar, who wouldn't listen to me, wouldn't take notice, always insisted Cribben were a God-fearing man who believed in strict discipline for children. Well, Cribben might've been God-fearing, but he were no good! Wrong in the head, to my thinking, righteous but wicked underneath. Him an' his sister both. Magda Cribben was a cold-hearted woman, in her way just as cruel as her brother.'
Percy's pale watery eyes had become moist and they stared straight ahead, looking neither at Eve or Gabe as he remembered the past.
'Nancy told me about the things that went on in Crickley Hall behind closed doors, but I don't think she knew the half of it. Otherwise she'd have done something about the situation. Instead she just up an' left. Or so we was told.'
Now he did look directly at Eve, his eyes troubled. She remembered his tale of Nancy Linnet, the young teacher who had become his sweetheart all those years ago, and Eve couldn't tell if the regret in his eyes was for Nancy and their doomed relationship, or for the children who had suffered so much in this place. She picked up the black book from the table and opened it.
God, Gabe was right, she thought, staring at the neat, rigid handwriting: there were names and dates, punishments accorded as well as the reasons for them, all written down in dulled-by-time blue ink. The reason for punishment was the same in every case: misbehaviour. And as far as Eve could tell, none of the children appeared to have escaped it, for all the names she remembered from the church's memorial board were mentioned, some more than others. And the dates started around late August 1943, apparently soon after the evacuees had arrived at Crickley Hall.
Eve turned several pages, glancing at the names and punishments, the latter of which were marked down 4, 6 or 10, presumably denoting the number of strokes of the cane that were dealt out each time.
'It goes on page after page,' remarked Gabe as he returned the cane to the table. 'Seems not a day went by without some of the kids being disciplined. Percy tells me there were other kinds of penalties for misbehaviour too, like making the kids stand on one spot in the hall all day, wearing nothing but their underwear.'