The Beggar's Curse Page 11

  And any fool knew what was being tapped out in there, by someone locked in presumably, somewhere in Edges’ shop. S.O.S. – May Day; Save Our Souls. Help.

  When Oliver pulled open the door of the chiller, Colin fell out, and went for him like a maniac, with a rusty hook in his hand. The face above the neat green anorak wasn’t Oliver’s at all, it belonged to the Edges, and it was trying to kill him.

  He’d been less than two hours in that dreadful cupboard, stuffed with its dead animals and birds, but it had felt like eternity and he’d lost all sense of time. All he’d been able to think about was Stang’s family of madmen, that crazy gang hell-bent on trickery and destruction. All faces were theirs now.

  Oliver’s priggish behaviour often irritated Colin and Prill, but he was at his best in a moment of crisis, and he didn’t lose his head now. He grabbed Colin’s hand and forced him to drop the meat hook, then he made him sit on the floor and rammed his head between his knees. “I know it was Sid. I’ll kill him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, he’s at school. I saw him this morning, getting on the bus.” Oliver found an old stool and made him sit on it, then he took off his anorak, scarf and hat, and forced Colin into them.

  “This is too tight, Oll, I can’t breathe,” he stammered, unable to get his words out because of the great waves of cold that were now rippling through him.

  “Just put it round you then, you look awful. You’ve got to warm up. Come on, let’s go home and I’ll make you a hot drink.”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t think I can walk that far, not yet. Just let me get my breath back, Oliver, I feel a bit peculiar.”

  Colin was shaking and grey-green, but Oliver had left him for a minute, to inspect the floor of the storeroom. “You know, you can’t blame the Edges for this,” he said. “Look at these tiles. They’re terribly uneven. That’s why they use these things.” He held up a rough wooden wedge. “They obviously keep the door open with this, when they’re putting stuff inside. You must have dislodged it.”

  “It was behind me, you fool,” Colin hissed. “Don’t you understand? The door was behind me, and it swung open. How could it swing shut again? Be reasonable.”

  Oliver didn’t say any more because his cousin had tears in his eyes, and he’d never seen that before. Colin must have been horribly frightened inside that chiller. It certainly wasn’t the right moment to tell him that the wretched poodle was safe and well inside Molly’s studio. But they had to consider everything, all the possibilities; what had happened could easily have been accidental. Little kids were always crawling into old freezers, on dumps and things, and getting trapped.

  Colin didn’t always think ahead; it had been the same up at Stang churchyard. No wonder the dog had been injured. Builders’ yards were dangerous places, like farms, and fridges were the same category. But it was no use telling Colin he’d imagined it all, not at the moment anyway, and especially not after that nightmare about Blake’s Pit.

  Oliver helped him to his feet and they walked round cautiously to the front of the shop. The coast was still clear, so he guided his shivering cousin across the road and up Molly’s path. He wouldn’t say anything else now, but it might never have happened if Colin had thought about what he was doing. He was still going on and on about the Edges, but that was silly. In Oliver’s opinion there were enough strange things going on in this village anyway, without imagining more.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Colin was determined to go to the play rehearsal and tackle the Edges, but he didn’t tell Oliver, who obviously thought it was his own fault that he’d got shut in that fridge. He simply took himself off to bed again with a hot drink and two hot-water bottles. He needed a few hours’ sleep before facing Tony and Sid.

  He just couldn’t stop thinking about that family and the fact that they’d not been responsible for the dog’s disappearance made no difference whatever. The more he suspected and feared them, the more they fascinated him. He was going to take some photos at the rehearsal, for the school’s summer competition. Some good pictures of Stang Mummers would be a real coup. It would annoy the Edges, but that was part of his plan.

  They went across to the schoolroom early, to get a seat at the front. Molly didn’t know what had happened in the shop yet – they’d just started to tell her when the phone rang with a message from Blake’s End to say Kath Brierley had taken a turn for the worse, and she’d had to rush off. Prill was still at the Bostocks’, having supper and hoping she’d be asked to stay the night. “Don’t you mind missing the rehearsal?” Jackie said enviously. “Not many people are allowed in on that, you know.” Prill concentrated on her apple pie and didn’t answer. She couldn’t care less any more.

  At the beginning of the rehearsal Winnie made an announcement. She wasn’t very tall so she climbed on a desk and clapped her hands to call everyone to order. “Before we start,” she said rather nervously, “I have to tell you that Mr Massey will not be playing King George. After what’s happened the family is naturally extremely, ah, upset. They have left the village for a while.”

  Self-satisfied, knowing looks were exchanged between Harold and Frank Edge, and Sid’s family glanced at one another slyly. They’d done it, they’d got rid of George Massey. He was an outsider anyway, much too full of himself, and the Council should never have allowed him to build that new house slap-bang in the middle of the village. It was a real eye-sore. He’d already been spotted in Ranswick, going into an estate agent’s office. The For Sale notices were only a matter of time.

  A squabble began about rearranging the main parts. Now King George was missing there was a big hole in the play, but he couldn’t be written out. Harold, Frank and Jack got in a huddle with Winnie while everything round them lapsed into chaos. The Puddings organized a sliding competition up and down the room, while the old villagers looked on with frosty disapproval. Oliver pulled a face at Colin and waited for fireworks. Harold Edge was getting very agitated.

  In the middle of it all, Rose Salt slid in at the back with Tony’s costume. It was still only tacked together but the embroidered horse on the front was finished, an elegant, prancing colt, gold silk against rich purple. “That’s beautiful, Rose,” Oliver whispered. “You are clever.”

  Rose annoyed Tony by pulling at his jacket. “Here you are, Tone,” she whispered. “I’ve only got to run it up on the machine now. Why don’t you try it on?” Tony Edge was preening himself in the middle of a few admirers, and looked distinctly embarrassed. “Give over, Rose Salt,” he muttered. But she wouldn’t take the hint, she just stood there goggling at him, with her mouth open, holding out the costume.

  “Now come on, Tony,” barked Winnie. “Let’s have a look at you, then we can get on. We’ve not got all night. You’ve done it beautifully, Rose.” With foul grumblings Tony Edge pulled the costume over his head. “Stop meithering me then, will you? Ouch, it’s got pins in, this has. There. Satisfied, are you?”

  He looked wonderful in his purple robe; the girls round him stared in admiration, and someone wolf-whistled at the back. But as soon as Rose Salt had got him inside the costume she seemed to want it back again. She began making odd little complaining noises, and pulling at it.

  People started to laugh. Rose Salt was a nutter, it was obvious that something didn’t please her about the costume. It was hard to believe she’d had a ducking in Blake’s Pit only twenty-four hours ago and that she’d been questioned by the police about Posie Massey’s disappearance. She was in full cry again now, and determined to get what she wanted. Tony had been enjoying all the attention, but the more he tried to shove her away the more persistent she became. “I want it back, Tone,” she kept saying in her shrill, high voice. “Give it back, will you.”

  Oliver was watching Rose closely. He could see she was frightened and he thought it was something to do with that little gold horse. As soon as she’d seen it, flattened out against Tony’s manly chest, the strange little creature had started to worry and complain. She’d bee
n all right until then.

  He saw Tony Edge tear the robe off and fling it at her across the floor; he saw her gather it up and push her way to the exit, and he saw her crying. Oliver was torn. He very much wanted to go with her, to find out what was wrong, but he couldn’t leave the rehearsal now. Events had just taken a vital turn.

  Winnie couldn’t get the Mummers to agree about anything. The only person willing to co-operate was Porky Bover, but she wouldn’t let him swap parts, he was too good and the only person willing to play a woman. Frank Edge had his hands full with three separate parts and the charge of Old Hob, and Harold would play nothing but the Doctor. “I always have and I always will,” he repeated monotonously. “Honestly,” sniggered Oliver. “He’s just like a record stuck in a groove.”

  Colin was carefully adjusting his camera; he’d taken three pictures already. There’d been a few dirty looks, but Winnie was there so nobody had told him to stop. Tony had been standing sideways on but he’d been in his purple costume, and the butcher brothers might come out rather well, one in bright orange, one in black, with the strange slit-eyed masks draped over their arms.

  There had been several opportunities to approach Sid and Tony; the rehearsal still hadn’t begun and they were muttering together in a corner. But Colin couldn’t get himself over to them somehow. He wasn’t being cowardly but every time he made a move they shot an icy stare at him as if to say “Go on, just you dare.” It was uncanny, like two magnets repelling each other, unable ever to touch, or as if Porky’s fairy ring had swept a charmed circle round them, keeping intruders away.

  “Look,” Winnie shrieked suddenly, as Colin dithered on his bench, “Do you want a play or don’t you? We’ve been here forty-five minutes already. King George is one of the key parts and we can’t get rid of him, some of the others yes, but not him. Now will somebody make a practical suggestion please, or I’m off.” And she picked up her handbag and her sensible raincoat.

  “I’ll have a go,” Oliver piped up suddenly in his reedy voice. Colin stared at him in disbelief, and there was an awful silence in the schoolroom. Had he gone stark raving mad?

  “YOU?” Harold, Frank and Jack said together.

  “Yes, me,” Oliver said firmly. “No one else has offered.”

  The Edges looked at each other. How dare he? He was an outsider, with his posh southern accent and his clever little smile. What could he be thinking of? But Oliver knew the play by heart because he’d picked up a copy of the lines at the first rehearsal. He’d got an excellent memory and it hadn’t taken him very long. “I think I could do it,” he said, “I’ve been in plays at school.” But his voice wavered slightly. Jack Edge was glowering at him, and he looked so fierce and hairy.

  The three brothers stood in a line, looking down at Oliver’s pale blue eyes and his spindly legs. He was kneehigh to a grasshopper. “You’re an outsider,” Jack growled. “It won’t work. You’re not from round here.”

  “Well, George Massey wasn’t, and he was in it,” Oliver retorted.

  “Yes, and look what happened to him,” Frank said loudly. “His garage went up in smoke, and his kid nearly got herself drowned. That’s what happens if you go changing everything. We should never have let him be in it.” But from the back there were loud cries of “Shame!” and “Rubbish!” and “Give the lad a chance!”

  Oliver took courage from all this and stood up. “My name’s Wright,” he said. “That’s something, and my father used to live in Stang – you ask Molly Bover. King George is always played by a Wright and I could—”

  “Shut your big mouth,” Harold Edge bellowed. “You’re an adopted child, it’s not the same at all.”

  Oliver turned scarlet, then white. Colin thought he was going to pass out. For a second all the things his mother had said to reassure him flew out of his head. (“We chose you, Oliver. We were lucky.”) Everyone in the hall was staring at him, and some were tittering. He could have killed Harold Edge.

  “Look, Tony can have a go at the King,” Winnie said suddenly, putting her hand on Oliver’s shoulder. She’d become quite fond of him, she liked clever children. But it wouldn’t do, of course. How odd of him to suggest it. Tony wasn’t much of an actor but at least he looked the part, and he had a very loud voice. “Sid,” she went on. “You can be Slasher, you’ve got a good memory so it shouldn’t take you long to learn. It’s a pity you’re not a bit bigger,” she added tactlessly, “but there we are.”

  Sid didn’t even hear the last remark. He was delighted to be given Slasher because the play always ended with a great big fight between him and King George. He’d enjoy having a bash at Tony. Jason Edge, a cousin who lived in the caravan, was roped in to be Little Devil Doubt. It was the perfect part for him, Winnie decided privately. He was the village tearaway, given to shoving heads down school lavatories and spitting at people from on top of walls. Oh, the Edges. They’d shortened her life by about ten years.

  Colin stayed for the whole rehearsal, taking more photographs, but Oliver slipped away. He went straight up to his bedroom at Elphins and shut the door. He didn’t want to speak to anyone for the rest of the evening.

  He’d tried. It was a crazy thing to do, but he’d tried, because he was seeing things more clearly now. Tony Edge wouldn’t do in the role of King George, it ought to be a Wright, and with “Dear Noel” sunning himself in Florida, Oliver thought they’d have seen the sense in his taking over. They were really very stupid if they thought that the village stranglehold on the play was enough, and that any old Edge or Bover would do in the King’s part. It went deeper than that.

  It was the Edges themselves who’d gone on to Winnie about breaking the luck and about not changing the old pattern. Well, patterns were more complicated than they realised. It was quite obvious to Oliver.

  When Colin left the schoolroom he saw a familiar car making its way along the village street from the direction of Blake’s End. It belonged to Christopher Eliot, the elderly doctor who’d been looking after Miss Brierley. Molly was already home, staring into the kitchen fire with a hollow-eyed, blank look that was becoming rather familiar. The old lady had died at nine that night.

  He found Prill in the sitting-room watching TV with Rose. Molly went off into the studio with the dogs and shut the door. She was very silent but she’d left a hot supper ready for them, and she was as kind as ever.

  After the rehearsal a group of Mummers in full costume went racketing round the village with Old Hob, kicking milk bottles over and making dogs bark. They were still at it after midnight. Molly was late in bed again. She slammed her bedroom window shut and pulled the curtains across quite viciously. Tony Edge’s raucous bellows were too much for her tonight.

  Her best and oldest friend was dead. There had been Brierleys in Stang for two hundred years, and her friend Kath was the last. She’d never married, and her brother Wilfred had had a family of girls. Kath was the last of the line and the name had died with her.

  It was the breaking of one pattern that the Edges neither cried about nor understood. They didn’t have friends, they simply stuck together like glue, and as thick as thieves.

  As she climbed into bed Molly heard Oliver coughing in the room next door. That child worried her. Winnie Webster had been on the phone earlier that evening to report that he’d managed to upset the Edges – he’d wanted to be in the play or something. Perhaps now the Masseys had gone everything might calm down a bit, but she didn’t feel very convinced about it. She still wondered about these three children and their role in things, especially Oliver’s. That boy was wise beyond his years and although he was the quietest of them all she felt he was a disturbing influence somehow.

  She fell asleep thinking about the old days, and about Kath Brierley. She’d known Molly all her life, she’d even taught her in Sunday School, more than sixty years ago. Death had come to the village tonight, and the saying round here was that it never came alone. Its victim was old and tired, and she’d been ill for a long time now. But it w
as still death.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Two days later Molly set her alarm to go off earlier than usual, and got up while Rose and the three children were still asleep. She was going to do a firing and she hadn’t quite finished packing the shelves of the kiln. It was a tricky operation, especially with her unsteady, arthritic hands, and she needed peace and quiet to concentrate.

  Stang was unusually quiet. The Easter holidays had started at last so there would be no chattering schoolchildren hanging about on the green, waiting for the early bus into Ranswick. It would be some time before they shook themselves awake this morning and began careering round the village on bikes. Oddly enough, though, Sid Edge was already up and about, lolling against the window of his uncles’ shop and looking up and down the street. He was no doubt waiting for a victim to come along to be shown the wonders of his brand-new racer. There couldn’t be any other reason for getting up so early, Molly decided. It was his birthday on Saturday, she remembered, the same day they were going to bury Kath Brierley. Not that an old woman’s funeral would interest the Edges.

  She was watching Sid from the front parlour window, and she noticed that he kept glancing across at the house. All the Edges had this nasty habit of spying, and she’d never really got used to it, not after fifty years of living in Stang. She waited till he was looking along the street again, then dropped the window curtain. She didn’t intend to give him any information whatever about her activities.

  As she went back into the flagged hall she suddenly thought of something and walked to the front door, clicking her tongue with annoyance. One of the poodles had gone missing yet again, yesterday morning; it was Dotty of course, and this time she hadn’t been shut in the airing cupboard, or anywhere else in the house. The children had hunted all over the village, but there’d been no sign of her, and they’d gone to bed last night with the dog still missing.