The Witch's Daughter (11 page)

But Tim was not content to wait. He ran beside Mr Tarbutt and Janey, shouting to tell the man all he had heard and all he had guessed. Mr Tarbutt did his best to listen, although the climb up from the bay and round the boggy slopes of Ben Luin was a hard one, in the rain and the wind. From time to time he nodded, and the rain flew out of the brim of his black, oilskin hat. He had unbuttoned his coat and tucked Janey inside it: all Tim could see of her was her long wet hair, streaming over Mr Tarbutt’s shoulder.

‘So we’ll have to telephone the police,’ Tim gasped out finally. ‘Just as soon as we get back.’

They were over the top of the ridge and going down towards Skuaphort. Mr Tarbutt stopped in the lee of the ruined cottage to rest a minute and adjust Janey’s weight. Incredibly, she seemed to have gone to sleep, breathing with little snores, her thumb half in, half out of, her mouth. Mr Tarbutt grinned at Tim over her head. ‘I reckon they may be here already, lad,’ he said. ‘Your mother, too, poor soul. Worried out of her mind about you.’

*

As Tim said, Mrs Hoggart had a good memory for faces. She had remembered, a little after she had spoken to Mr Tarbutt, exactly where she had seen Mr Jones—or, rather, his
photograph
—before. She had told the police in Oban. ‘Some time ago and something to do with a robbery,’ was all she could tell
them, but it had been enough. The police not only knew about Mr Jones: they knew he was on Skua.

‘They’d kept an eye on him these last three years apparently,’ Mr Tarbutt said, when he had explained that Mrs Hoggart had telephoned again, from the police station in Oban, just as he had returned from his first, fruitless expedition to the bay. ‘So when he came north, it was a matter of routine to inform the local police. Not that there was anything
against
him, you understand …’ Mr Tarbutt hesitated. ‘Not until he attacked your father, that is. It seems he’d done nothing suspicious since the jewels were stolen—nothing to show he wasn’t as innocent as he claimed to be. Just got on with his job, and then, after three years, a little holiday on Skua …’

Tim was almost too breathless with excitement to speak. ‘What about Mr Smith?’ he managed to gasp, but Mr Tarbutt shrugged his shoulders and gave Tim a doubtful, sideways look.

‘Nothing on him, far as I know. Just a quiet gentleman who minds his own business. Still, if you tell the police what you’ve told me, I daresay they’ll pay him a little visit.’

‘He’ll have gone by then,’ Tim said glumly. The wind was gentler now they were down off the ridge and when they reached the stone road, he was able to trot beside Mr Tarbutt quite comfortably, telling him about Perdita and how she had gone home up the cliff. ‘She’ll have warned him,’ he said. ‘She knows he’s a thief and he ought to go to prison, I told her, but she didn’t like it much. She said he’d been good to her and Annie.’

‘Poor little lass,’ Mr Tarbutt said.

‘It would have been poor all of us,’ Tim said indignantly. ‘If that horrible Mr Jones had had his way.’

Mr Tarbutt made no direct reply to this, but he shifted Janey’s weight against his shoulder and took Tim’s hand. He held it tight and comfortingly, until they reached the little town and saw the lights of the police launch, rocking in the bay, and Mrs Hoggart waiting, wild-eyed and frantic in the doorway of
the hotel. After she had hugged and kissed them and heard their story—which led to more hugging and kissing and a few, grateful tears—she told them that Mr Jones had never got to Trull. Will Campbell’s boat had been near foundering in the rough sea when the daily ferry that ran between Trull and the mainland, had picked them up and taken them to Oban.

Mr Jones had been arrested as he walked off the boat.

T
HE
WITCH’S DAUGHTER
came down to the loch. The hills sheltered it from the wind, but the heavy rain steamed onto it, making the mist rise, white and thick. It swirled round her, clinging in damp pearls to her rain-soaked hair. She had run so fast that the cold breath sobbed in her throat and sent spikes of pain down into her chest: as she stumbled onto the pebbly shore of the loch, the greedy black water sucked at her boots and she stumbled and almost fell.

Recovering, she stood still a minute. The Lake Horse had come out of the loch on a night like this, and taken her mother. Annie MacLaren had said so, and Perdita believed it, as she believed the other things the old woman had told her. Indeed, Perdita was sure she had often seen the Lake Horse, racing across the surface of the water. He had never frightened her. Why should he? All he could do, would be to take her to live with her mother under the surface of the loch.

But tonight, peering into the mist, she
was
afraid. Too frightened to move, suddenly, too frightened, even, to
whimper
. Fear—this kind of cold, rigid fear—was new to her. Witches are never frightened. Perhaps what Tim had said in the cave was true: she had stopped being a witch, and become ordinary, like other children.

She thought: but ordinary children can’t breathe under water. If the Lake Horse came for her tonight, she would drown. She began to stumble round the shore of the loch, no longer a witch, just a frightened little girl. And when she saw him, out of the corner of her eye—huge, white, with a great,
flowing mane—she began to scream loudly and piercingly, like any other frightened child.

As she screamed, the Lake Horse began to change shape. His neck extended, became thin and tenuous, until it drifted away from his body, and his body itself began to dissolve, to melt …

Perdita stopped screaming. ‘You’re nothing … just
mist,
’
she said in a loud, contemptuous voice, and ran away from the loch, up the side of the bank towards Luinpool.

*

Annie MacLaren was standing by the back door, an oil lamp in her hand. ‘Where’ve you been, lady? He’s been on at me, worrying.’

Perdita ran past her, through the kitchen and into the hall. Her footsteps slowed as she reached the door of Mr Smith’s room, and she stood outside it for a moment, her heart
thumping
. Mr Jones was a bad man and he had left them in the cave—to die, Tim had said. He had said Mr Smith was a bad man, too. If that was true, what would
he
do, when she admitted what she had done? Then she remembered that he had often been kind to her, drew a long, shaky breath, and opened the door.

He was lying back in his chair, an open book face downwards on his lap. He looked up and asked what she wanted in an irritated voice that would ordinarily have sent her scuttling from the room: she wasn’t frightened of Mr Smith, but Annie had taught her to respect his moods.

He seemed surprised when she stood her ground. ‘Anything the matter?’ he asked, quite kindly, sitting up in his chair and closing his book.

She swallowed hard: ‘They’re going to tell the police about you,’ she said.

Mr Smith picked up the poker and thumped thoughtfully at a lump of peat on the fire, making the sparks fly. Then he looked up at her, smiling. ‘Who’s they?’

‘The boy and girl from the hotel. Tim says you’ll go to prison.’

‘Prison?’ Mr Smith said. He still smiled, but his fist was clenched on the handle of the poker. ‘Does he say what for?’

Perdita looked down at her feet. ‘He says you’re a bad man.’

‘What kind of bad man?’ he asked mildly.

Encouraged by his gentleness, she looked at him. ‘A thief. He says you’re the head of a gang of jewel thieves.’

Mr Smith laughed, rather too loudly. ‘That’s a good story. I gather you’ve been talking, witch. Haven’t you?’ She did not answer and, after a minute he said slowly, ‘I see … So you told them all about me, eh? What did you tell them, exactly?’

‘Nothing. Not about you.’ Her lips felt dry and she
moistened
them with the tip of her tongue. ‘I just showed Janey my lucky stone and they found out Mr Jones gave it to me that night he came here. And when he ran away and left us in Carlin’s Cave …

‘When he did
what
?’

Stumblingly, frightened by his look and the sudden
harshness
in his voice, Perdita explained about the cave and how Mr Jones had taken them in and left them there, without a light. ‘Tim said he left us there to die, just so he could get away,’ she said, and her lip quivered.

Mr Smith stared into the fire. ‘The fool—oh the
fool
,’ he said. ‘My God—if they believe that, they’ll take the island apart.’ He was silent, then, for what seemed to Perdita a terribly long time and when he began to speak again it was very softly, as if he were talking to himself. ‘Who’ll believe it, though? A child’s story?
If
he’s got clean away …’ Suddenly he dropped the poker on to the hearth with a clatter and said, ‘I’ve got to know …’

He looked at Perdita. ‘Come here, little witch,’ he said. His voice was gentle again, but it was a forced gentleness. She went to him reluctantly and he held her fast by the wrist as Mr Jones had done, the night he came. ‘Look at me.’ She looked at him
and saw her own reflection in the dark pools of his glasses. ‘Listen,’ Mr Smith said, ‘there’s something you’ve got to do for me …’

*

A little later the white Jaguar drove down to Skuaphort. Just outside the town it stopped and pulled off the road into a farm gateway. Perdita got out. The wind was very strong now and seemed to blow her like a leaf, down the stony road towards the town and the hotel.

At the closed door, she hesitated.
Find
Tim,
Mr Smith had said,
find
Tim
and
ask
him
… Though the hotel door was closed, it would not be locked, she knew: no one locked doors on Skua. She could steal in and up to his room. She knew which it was—first on the left at the top of the stairs, Janey had told her. She put her hand in the door, and then withdrew it, her courage failing. The bar was dark, but light streamed from the lounge window into an empty sun parlour that had been built against the side of the hotel. The parlour had a door that gave onto the street. As soon as she turned the handle, the wind blew the door inwards: once inside, it took all her strength to close it. She climbed on a crate of empty beer bottles and peered through the window into the lounge.

Tim was there. He was sitting by the fire in his dressing gown between his mother and a large man Perdita had never seen on the island before. He had close-cropped, gingery hair and a large, amiable, pale face. He was talking. She could see his lips move but the window was closed and she could not hear what he said.

*

The policeman had a soft, Scotch voice. He rolled his R’s beautifully. He had a brown mole low down on one pale cheek, and while he talked it waggled up and down.

‘So you see,’ he was saying, ‘we’d kept tabs on Pr-r-att. Or Jones, if you like, since that’s the name you’ve got used to. We
didn’t believe his story, but since he sat tight and did nothing, there was nothing we could do, either. Not directly. Enquiries were made, of course. There was this gang he’d talked of—well, you know most of the time the police have a pretty good idea what most of the criminal population is up to, and this wasn’t any gang they could put a finger on. More likely there was just one other man—possibly two, but probably one.
Someone
who’d got at Jones—someone pretty persuasive, because firms in the jewel trade are careful whom they employ, you know, and there was no suggestion he’d been up to anything of this sort before. Well—who had he been seeing? No one, it seemed, except a few innocent neighbours, until we came up with
this
man. It turned out that he’d been seen with a stranger several times, walking in the park, talking in a local pub. That was some time before the robbery took place—no one
remembered
seeing him afterwards. Naturally we asked Jones, but he denied it. At least, he didn’t exactly deny it, he just said he was a friendly sort and often talked to strangers, but that he didn’t remember talking to anyone in particular during the last six months … Well, we couldn’t press it. You can’t hound a man without evidence and there wasn’t any evidence. Only
suspicion
. He
did
seem to have a bit more money than he’d had before. He launched out a bit—new washing machine, new motor mower, that sort of thing. Not enough to act on, just enough to make us wonder …’

‘Sit on the loot,’ Tim said. ‘Don’t spend it. Or only carefully, bit by bit. That’s what he said.’

The policeman nodded. ‘That’s what it looked like. That’s what our people in London thought, anyway.’

‘Did you have a description of the stranger?’ Tim asked eagerly.

This was, he thought, the most exciting night of his life. For a while after they got back, Janey had been the centre of
attention
as she deserved to be. Now, hugged and kissed and sated
with admiration, she had been put to bed with a sedative, and it was Tim’s turn. Here he was, at nearly eleven o’clock, sitting with a real live plain clothes policeman who had listened gravely and courteously to all he had to say and was now telling him a marvellous story that might have come out of a
newspaper
or a book.

‘Description?’ the policeman said. ‘Not one that helps much. Medium height, medium weight, medium colouring …’

‘It
could
be Mr Smith, though?’

‘Or a great many other people.’ The policeman smiled at Tim. ‘Listen, young man. I’ve been very interested in what you’ve told me, don’t think I haven’t, but I’m afraid I’ll have to warn you, too. Don’t go spreading stories about Mr Smith. There’s such a thing as slander. Nor about Mr Jones, either. We’re interested to know what he’s been up to, on Skua, and it seems from what you’ve told me that he
has
been up to
some
thing
. But only
seems
, mind you. We’ve no real proof he was up to anything at all …’

‘He came to collect his share of the loot,’ Tim said positively. ‘And he was going to fly off with it to South America.’

‘It’s possible. But we’ve no proof of it. On the face of it, he and Mr Campbell were on an innocent fishing trip when they got into difficulties. And when we picked him up, he’d got nothing on him.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Just a bag of toffees! ‘We’re holding him, of course, but we can’t do that for long.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Mrs Hoggart’s voice was indignant. ‘He assaulted my husband.’

‘He admits he pushed him,’ the policeman said slowly. ‘He says he went into the wrong room by mistake and when your husband came in he was startled. He pushed past Mr Hoggart to get out of the room and then, when the accident happened, he simply lost his nerve and kept quiet about it.’ The policeman paused. ‘The way he tells it, it sounds like a—well, a regrettable
accident.
’

‘But the children!’ Mrs Hoggart cried. ‘He took those poor children into the cave and left them there. That was a terrible thing, a wicked thing …’

The policeman sighed. ‘Well—I got on the phone to Oban while you were putting the little lass to bed. They had a word with him and rang me back. He says he met the children on the beach and played with them a bit. They did go into the cave, he says, and he was a bit worried about leaving them there, but he and Campbell were going fishing and he supposed they’d be safe enough. He assumed they had torches, he said, and though he wouldn’t have let
his
children wander about alone, if
their
parents weren’t worried, it wasn’t his business. Thoughtless, a bit casual, but not
criminal,
you see …’

Tim could hardly believe his ears. He said shrilly, ‘But you don’t believe him, do you?’

The policeman looked at him thoughtfully. ‘What I believe isn’t evidence, you know. And I’m afraid that when we find Campbell—he just walked off the ferry, we’d no reason for holding him since we’d not heard this story then—he’ll back up Mr Jones’s story. Jones seemed confident he would.’

‘Mr Campbell didn’t want to leave us in the cave,’ Tim said. He felt depressed and helpless. He knew what he had said was true, he had
heard
Toffee Papers talking in the cave, but
apparently
no one would believe him. It wasn’t
fair,
he thought childishly. Feeling miserable and sullen, he slouched back in his chair, scowling, and then became aware that the policeman was looking at him in an interested way.

‘Didn’t he?’ the policeman said. ‘That’s a useful thing to know …’ He looked straight in front of him and appeared to address the air. ‘If we get hold of him before he hears the children are safe, if we tell him they’re still missing … there’s just a chance we may get at the truth …’

Tim gasped and sat bolt upright. ‘You
do
believe me then?’ he said. Excitement buzzed in his head.