The Stranger House (53 page)

“Sam was alive when he went into the Moss,” said Sam bluntly, “I’ve seen the autopsy report. He died of drowning. I think Dunstan decided the only way forward was to get rid of him. Quick thinking, isn’t that what they teach them in the SAS? He thinks of the Moss then decides it would be best to weigh the body down. Thor’s unused stones are lying around, perhaps he stored them in the garage. They’re a good size for stuffing in pockets. He then dumps him in the back of his jeep and heads up the track to the Moss. He finds a pool, probably holds the poor bastard’s head under till he’s sure he’s not going to revive. Then he watches till the clothes get sodden and the weight of the stones pulls the body down out of sight.”

She finished. Part of her wanted Mig to agree with her reasoning. But another part, aware that to all the other crimes she was laying at the door of her newly found family she was now adding murder, wanted him to laugh and set about demolishing her calculations.

He stood with his head bowed. In prayer? She hoped not.

Then he raised his head and she saw in his eyes that she, or something, had convinced him.

“This is a terrible thing,” he said.

“You agree with me then?”

“Yes. Now I understand why Sam’s apparition held out the stones to me. It was a message I couldn’t understand, one that I would never have understood without you. That’s why we were both brought here.”

Bloody typical! she thought. It wasn’t her immaculate reasoning that got him agreeing with her but the way it fitted in with his mumbo-jumbo!

She felt a huge exasperation welling up inside her, but recognizing it as that kind of exasperation compounded with affection which she had previously only felt when provoked by her ma or pa or, bless her memory, Gramma Ada, she battened it down. This wasn’t the time or place for a falling out, especially on a side issue.

The main point was she’d reasoned herself into making a good case that her namesake, Sam Flood the curate, had been murdered, and the man she now knew to be her great grandfather was the killer.
Eu-bloody-reka!

“So what do we do now?” said Mig.

She liked the
we.
Exasperating he might be, but at least he wasn’t ducking out.

She said, “I don’t know. There’s no evidence, just logic, and law’s got nothing to do with logic.”

“What do you want to do?” he asked gently.

“I want to go away and forget about all of this stuff,” she heard herself saying, “But I know I can’t. These ideas about Saintly Sam just muddy the water even more. I’d like to set them aside completely till I get things straight
with regard to Gerry. In fact, I wish I’d never got into the Sam stuff at all. But now I know what I think, I’ve got to tell Thor and Edie at least. They’ve spent forty years blaming themselves for Sam’s death. They’ve a right to know what we think really happened.”

He put his arms around her and drew her close.

“You know, despite all your efforts to hide it, you’re a good old-fashioned moral … woman,” he murmured.

“Yeah? If you’d said girl I’d have kneed you in the crotch, and how moral would that have been? Let’s get away from this place. It gives me the creeps.”

They turned and made their way back downhill. As they neared the track they saw the pick-up approaching from Foulgate, moving at a speed which wasn’t good for its suspension.

“Thor’s in a hurry,” said Sam, “Perhaps he got a dusty welcome.”

She waved her hand, expecting the vehicle to slow down, but if anything it came faster.

It was Mig who spotted it first.

“That’s not Thor driving!” he said, “It’s Gowder!”

Then it was past them in a cloud of dust and swinging round the curve that marked the descent to the Hall.

“Oh shit,” said Sam, “Where’s Thor? What do you think’s happened to him?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Mig, “Come on.”

He set off at a fast jog along the track towards Foulgate.

“Don’t you think we should try to warn them at the Hall that he’s coming?” panted Sam, for the first time finding herself stretched to keep up with him.

“No way to warn them, he’ll be there long before we could get close. No, we need to check that Thor’s all right,” said Mig grimly.

She checked his logic and found, rather to her surprise, that it was totally without flaw. Then Mig’s concern for Winander proved infectious and images of him lying in the farmyard with his head stove in began to fill her mind.

It was with huge relief that she heard Mig cry, “I think I see him!”

She strained her eyes through the gathering gloom of the impending storm and saw way ahead a figure moving towards them. Another couple of seconds confirmed it was Thor and a few moments later they met.

There was no sign of blood, but there were the beginnings of a livid bruise on his right temple and he looked as if he’d been rolling in dust and mud.

“Did you see him?” he yelled.

“Yes. He went past us like a bat out of hell,” said Sam, “What happened?”

“The bastard thumped me!” said Thor, “I met him coming out of his barn. I tried to speak to him and next thing I was flying through the air. Then he got into the pick-up, turned it round and took off. He’d have backed it clean over me if I hadn’t rolled out of the way. Come on, we need to get down to the Hall!”

“Why? What do you think he’s likely to do there?” gasped Mig as they set off jogging back along the track.

“God knows,” said Thor, “All I know is when I saw him he was carrying an axe and a jerrycan full of petrol, so I don’t think he’s going for tea!”

Afterwards all Sam recalled, not without shame, of running along that seemingly endless track was the pain in her legs and lungs, her shock that she was finding it hard to keep up with a sexagenarian and an invalid, and her determination that she wasn’t going to be beaten.

The shame derived from her later realization that what motivated the two men to break their pain barriers was unselfish concern for the inmates of the Hall. Perhaps, she tried to explain to Mig, it was a gender thing. She, being a woman, found it impossible to imagine the worst Laal Gowder might do. They, being men and thus tarred with the same brush, had no delusions.

Even to herself it did not sound a reasonable argument.

But they all shared an equal relief when at last the twisted chimneys of Illthwaite Hall came into sight.

A few moments later, as they reached the viewpoint where Mig had paused the previous day, Thor stopped. The others, taking their lead from him, came to a halt too and peered down the fellside towards the house.

The pick-up was parked close against the wall, its driver’s door wide open. Up the slope opposite the kitchen window they could see Laal Gowder. He was standing
alongside the great carved trunk that had killed his brother, swinging a long-handled axe with practised ease and driving its head into the fatal wood.

Into Sam’s mind came words from the Reverend Peter K.’s
Guide:

No such problem, diabolic or human, here. No bell-like sound either. Just a solid
crunch!
as the blade drove deep into the bole sending woodchips flying off to left and right.

“He’s decapitating it,” said Thor, “He’s taking the Wolf-Head right off.”

“But why?” asked Mig, which seemed to Sam an odd question for a religious guy to ask when a paid-up atheist like herself had no problem with following the superstitious irrationalities of Gowder’s psyche.

“Because it killed his brother,” said Thor, “I always knew that sodding thing was evil. I should never have listened to Frek. At least Gowder is taking it out on something inanimate … Oh shit!”

A figure had appeared at the kitchen window. Sam couldn’t make it out, but Thor had no doubt who it was, nor of the possible consequences.

“It’s Gerry,” he said. Then he bellowed, “Stay inside, you stupid bugger! Don’t come out!”

Even Thor’s mighty shout could hardly have reached the man in the kitchen. He vanished from the window. Sam looked towards the kitchen doorway, then realized she could only see the top of it because the pick-up was parked so close to the wall. The door opened, but the vehicle blocked exit. There might have been space for someone as skinny as she was to crawl out alongside the wheel, but not for a thick-set man like Woollass.

There was a cry of triumph, more an animal howl, as one last blow from Gowder’s axe separated the Wolf-Head from the bole. But he wasn’t finished yet.

Dropping his axe, he picked up a petrol can and started to pour the fuel over the snarling head.

Again words scrolled across Sam’s mind:

But once more, if this were that same Other Cross, its powers of resistance seemed to have died over the years. Laal Gowder brought a box of matches out of his pocket, struck one and let it fall. The petrol ignited with a whoosh and in a few moments it was clear that the old dry wood was burning away merrily. No, not merrily, thought Sam. Somehow the shimmering diaphane of flame made the carved Wolf-Head look as if it were writhing and snarling in the heart of the fire.

Mig put her thoughts into words.

“It’s more like he’s bringing that thing to life than destroying it,” he said.

“I think we’d better get down there,” said Thor.

But before they could resume their descent, events in the drama which they were viewing from the distant gallery began to spiral out of control.

Gerry had reappeared at the kitchen window and opened it to shout something at Gowder. In the bedroom window immediately above they could now see the figure of Dunstan, unmistakable with his mane of white hair above his cardinal red robe. Sam thought she glimpsed someone behind him. Mrs Collipepper? It would be like the man not to let the drama of the day interfere with his refreshing “nap.”

Laal Gowder seemed to find the sight of one or both of them, and perhaps the words that Gerry was shouting, an unbearable provocation.

He stooped down, seized the flaming Wolf-Head in both hands, raised it high in the air, and hurled it through the kitchen window. Gerry fell back out of sight. And Gowder, his axe in one hand, the petrol can in the other, scrambled on to the sill and squeezed through the open window.

Now the three spectators were running again. No time for commentary now, no breath to spare even for exclamations of shock, they ran as humans have always run, towards danger even when they know that tragedy is inevitable.

It took at most three minutes, probably less, for them to be turning into the driveway, but in that time the age of the wolf had come and it was not to be denied.

In the kitchen Gowder had gone berserk. A blow from the axe, fortunately from the flat of the blade not
its edge, drove Gerry Woollass to the floor. Before he passed out he saw the enraged man hacking the furniture and fittings to pieces, but, with a heightened instinct for destruction, aiming the worst of his violence at the kitchen range, severing all its input pipes and releasing an unstoppable supply of gas into the air.

Then, it later became clear, he had run amuck through the rest of the house, trailing petrol till the can was empty, then using his axe to reduce everything he encountered to firewood.

To the three figures running down the drive, the attractive front elevation of the Hall looked the same as it had looked for almost half a millennium. Only the smoke billowing up from the far end gave normalcy the lie. But as Thor flung open the front door there was a muffled explosion as the gas in the kitchen ignited, sending a blast of hot air driving deep into the building, and the trail of petrol laid by the crazed Gowder sent flames leaping joyously upward to seize on panelling and beams whose wood had been drying out for centuries.

Buildings like these, wrote the chief fire officer in his report, were often bonfires waiting to be lit. A circular warning of the dangers, detailing the protective measures available, had been sent out to all owners the previous year. Frek Woollass had been keen that its recommendations should be followed, but her father had looked at the estimated cost and declared that the money could be put to much better use in the community. Thus, opined that keen ironist Thor Winander, had Gerry’s compulsion to atone ultimately brought about the destruction of his ancestral home.

But such philosophical niceties had no place in the
minds of the three new arrivals as they burst into the entrance hall, which was already filling with smoke.

Sam had no firm idea what they should or could do now they were here, but Thor like a Hollywood action hero had no doubt of his priorities.

“The old man’s upstairs,” he said, making for the staircase.

“What about Gerry in the kitchen?” said Mig.

“Either he got out or he’s a goner,” said Thor over his shoulder.

It was an analysis too clear to need debate. The kitchen was the volcanic centre of the eruption which was threatening the downfall of the whole building. Nothing could survive in there.

The thought trailed across Sam’s logical mind that Gerry’s death would remove the problem of their first confrontation. She brushed it away angrily and in its place popped the question whether Thor would be so keen to dash to old Dunstan’s aid if he knew what she suspected about his involvement in Sam Flood’s death.

This too she erased as irrelevant. But the question she couldn’t get out of her mind as she went up the stairs behind the two men was the same question she’d found herself asking in the wake of the other Gowder’s death beneath the Wolf-Head—
Is this all down to me?