The Beggar's Curse Read online

  Molly half wished she’d not been so soft-hearted about these poodles. They were expensive to feed, Dotty was a real nuisance, and the pair of them made far too much noise. She just hoped the wretched dog hadn’t been hanging round the back of Edges’ shop again. Last time that had happened Harold had knocked on her door to complain, with the hapless poodle stuffed under one arm like a joint of pork.

  She put her hand on the front door bolt, then dropped it again. She really didn’t want to get into a conversation with Sid Edge just at that moment. She went through to the kitchen and opened the back door instead. The two remaining dogs slipped past her legs and into the damp back garden, and Molly called quietly, “Dotty! Dotty! Silly dog, where on earth are you?” She listened, and waited, but all was silence. After a few minutes, Jessie and Potty trotted in again and hung round her feet, hopefully waiting for signs of breakfast, but Molly’s mind was back on the kiln.

  “I must check what’s gone in,” she said to herself, shuffling round in her old slippers, making herself a mug of tea. “That bread crock’s my main problem, a waste of space really. Still, perhaps this time. . .” She often chatted to herself as she pottered about. “I’m a good listener,” she told Rose who, for all her odd ways, thought talking to yourself was an eccentric habit. The bread crock was a large item ordered specially by a lady in Ranswick, and Molly had made two attempts at it already. Large pots were often tricky, and both had shattered during the firing. “Third time lucky,” she told herself, opening the studio door; when you fired a kiln all sorts of things could go wrong.

  In the studio she discovered that the kiln door was shut already, and the main switch was down. For a second or two the facts didn’t really sink in. Molly simply stood there, staring at the kiln across the dusty flagstones, with the blue mug in her hand and her mouth half open. Then, quite calmly, and willing herself not to panic, she walked slowly into the middle of the cluttered room and looked round carefully, counting, estimating, racking her brains to try and remember just what she had done the day before.

  She had no recollection at all of packing the kiln, or of switching it on. True, she was forgetful these days, but she wasn’t so far gone, not yet anyway. Besides, there on a shelf behind her was Mrs Warburton’s unfired bread crock, and half a dozen large coffee cups she’d ordered at the same time. She wouldn’t have fired a half-empty kiln. But she’d started to shiver slightly even so, and she put the untouched mug of tea down on a stool.

  The kiln was an old one, with the most basic controls. Molly was so familiar with it she could more or less tell by feel how long it had been on, in the early stages. Shakily, she stretched both hands and put them against the door, detecting only the faintest warmth. The needle of the heat gauge, under its cracked glass, had scarcely moved from zero. She reached up to the wall behind and switched the kiln off at the mains, noticing, as she did so, that there was a thin, vapoury cloud coming from the bung hole at the top, and an odd, slightly steamy smell in the air.

  She must open the door and get it properly cool again before arranging her shelves inside. One of those children must be responsible for this – Oliver was the most likely, he’d been very curious about the whole business of potting, and had trailed round the studio after her yesterday, asking a string of questions. Yet he seemed such a law-abiding child, always asking what they were allowed to do – a boy after his mother’s own heart. Why on earth interfere with her kiln like this, and at this hour of the morning, too?

  She had eased herself down on to her knees in front of the kiln door when a big tongue suddenly licked her face. “Jessie, now out you go,” she protested feebly, but the hungry dog only retreated a few inches and sat quietly by the clay bin, wagging her tail. The poodle was much less obedient. She stood up on her hind legs and buried her sharp little paws in Molly’s neck, licking and yapping at the same time, her idiotic pompom tail whirring to and fro like an electric brush. She’d been busy chewing something, but dropped it again in order to lick the unresponsive Molly. It looked like an old library ticket enclosed in a plastic case. Molly picked it up and examined it. Holding it at arm’s length she could just about read it without her spectacles; it was a bus pass, and it belonged to Sidney P. Edge of Ranswick Middle School.

  Potty was now busy trying to curl up in the sloping lap. She’d stopped barking and started to whine, punctuating the monotonous droning noise with the odd dry yelp. And suddenly, from somewhere far away, Molly heard an answering squeak. The fussing poodle pricked up its ears, loosened its precarious hold on the woman’s dressing gown, and dropped to the floor like a big black spider. The tiny squeak came again, and this time Potty leapt up at the kiln door, scrabbling at the chipped paint and hurling herself bodily against it. Jessie limped over and stood interestedly behind Molly, making the occasional low woofling noise.

  She almost kicked the two dogs aside in her efforts to pull the door open. It swung out on scraping hinges and she thrust her head inside, feeling blindly round with shivering hands.

  Dotty was a tiny pulsating heap in the furthest corner of the empty kiln. She was making feeble mewing noises, like a kitten; her head seemed to be stuck lopsidedly between her woolly shoulders, and as Molly pulled her out and set her gently on the floor, her four legs straddled in all directions, as if they didn’t belong to her any more. She was smelly and sticky all over. She’d been sick in the kiln, and her black wool was matted and standing up in peaks. Jessie was wary. She stood her distance from the disgusting black object that had now collapsed on the studio floor, and which Molly was coaxing and wrapping in an old towel. But Potty was jubilant, leaping at her legs, and rapturously licking all the mess off her poor sister’s ears and nose as she lay all bundled up in green and yellow stripes, being carried round the studio like a baby.

  The dog seemed shocked and stunned – something about its glassy, half-lidded stare suggested it might have been drugged. Even so, it would live. It was already squirming back to life inside its striped swaddling clothes, and one beady eye was following the progress of the other dogs up and down the studio floor, while the shattered Molly paced mechanically to and fro, wondering what on earth she should do next, and how in heaven’s name this terrible thing had happened.

  And suddenly, she knew. In a fit of panic she flung the studio door open, bundled the two dogs into the kitchen and shut them in. Then, still cradling Dotty, she sagged down on to an old chair, looking at the open kiln, the bread crock, and the row of unfired cups on a shelf, with that awful sweaty smell in her nostrils. She knew what must have happened now, earlier this morning, and what had been meant to happen. And if she hadn’t set her alarm and got up so early, the wretched poodle. . .

  Molly dug down in her pocket for the bus pass. Anyone else who’d tried to pull off a bizarre trick like this would have put the length of the village between himself and the scene of the crime, or else got on that bicycle and made himself scarce for the rest of the day. Not Sidney P. Edge, oh no, he was actually hanging round the house to see what came of his spectacular arrangements. He might still be out there, propping up the fence and staring at Elphins with those hard, suspicious little eyes.

  The dog seemed to have fallen into a doze. Tucking it under her arm in its striped towel, Molly lifted the latch of the outer studio door, slipped into the garden and made her way round the house.

  Grateful for her rubber-soled slippers she stole silently down the path and through the front gate. Sure enough, Sid was still outside the shop and bending over his shiny new bike. It was nothing to Molly that she stood in the village street in her dressing gown, with her long grey hair floating in the wind. She marched straight across and grabbed Sid by the shoulder.

  He dropped his bicycle pump and whipped round, opening his mouth to protest. But when he saw the wriggling, stripey bundle, and the bus pass thrust under his nose, he let out a weird, strangled shout. Then, to Molly’s amazement, he didn’t cut and run, he simply collapsed against the wall and stared up at her.


  She couldn’t quite believe it, she’d been all set for a fight and she’d have dragged him bodily into the house if need be, rather than let him go. But it wasn’t necessary; he went back with her into the studio quite meekly and told her everything in one great burst, as if he was glad to get the hideous trick off his conscience.

  “They’re horrible dogs, miss,” he snivelled, with his eyes fixed on the kiln door. “I hate them, everyone does, allus mekkin a row. And that one’s the worst, it got me into trouble with Our Vi. It tore one of her dresses up, and she said it was me, doin’ a costume for the play like. She gave me a right thumpin’. Well, it came round the shop yesterday, cadgin’, and I got it drunk like, on me uncles’ home brewed.” A smile crept over his pasty little face as he thought of it; making that daft dog tipsy had been dead good.

  “How did it get inside the kiln?” Molly’s voice was unnaturally harsh and shrill, and she felt she was beginning to lose her grip on the situation. The silly dog certainly had a passion for creeping into warm places and going to sleep – Rose was for ever turfing her out of cupboards. Even so, with Harold Edge’s beer inside her. . . She gave Sid a long, hard stare, and tightened her grip on his wiry little arm.

  “All right, so you got the poor animal drunk yesterday,” she said, as if tormenting an innocent creature was the most natural sport in the world. “So that’s where it was while those three children were walking their legs off looking for it. And you came into the studio with it this morning, I suppose? Then what did you do?”

  Sid hung his head and started to cry, and Molly shook him hard. She couldn’t stand much more of this. Her best friend was dead, Rose Salt had been up to her silly disappearing tricks again, and she had these three children on her conscience. They obviously weren’t enjoying their holiday at all, and the girl kept writing long letters to her parents. “What did you do?” she repeated. “Answer me, will you, or I’ll knock your head off.”

  Sid Edge stared at her wildly. She would, too, she was a mad woman, and if his father got to hear what he’d been up to he’d thrash him within an inch of his life. He didn’t know what to say for the best, or what lies to tell.

  “I – I don’t know what came over me, miss,” he blurted out at last. “I was in here with it like, and it was warm. It went up to the kiln and put its nose in, and then. . . it crept in, like. It wanted to.”

  “And you shut the door on it?”

  Sid didn’t reply. He stared at the floor instead, plotting his next move. It was just his luck to have dropped the bus pass. It must have fallen from his pocket as he reached up in the early-morning gloom, to plug the kiln in. If it hadn’t been for that she would never have found out.

  “So you shut the door on it?” Molly repeated, “And then you switched on? Answer me, will you!” And before she could stop herself she had struck him very hard across the face.

  Quite suddenly the boy got to his feet. He was cunning, like all the Edges, and he knew his rights. His best policy was silence. If he ignored her questions she couldn’t really pin anything on him, not even with the bus pass. “I’m tellin’ me mam,” he said, rubbing the tears dry and straightening his cap. “I’m goin’ straight home and I’m tellin’. You’re not supposed to hit children, Mrs Bover.”

  At that moment it was Molly who felt like a child. The snivelling Sid Edge seemed to grow as he stood in the doorway, and there was a dreadful hardness in his face that made her cold inside. But for all their craftiness the ferret eyes were plainly bewildered. “I don’t know what came over me, miss,” was what she always remembered whenever she thought about their extraordinary conversation, and she could picture him quite clearly, sitting on the old chair, watching with mild fascination as the wretched dog crept up to the kiln door, letting it go inside to its own death.

  Sid had stepped into the garden. There was a dark red patch on his right cheek, and he was stroking it with filthy fingernails. “I’m goin’,” he repeated. “I’m goin’ home and I’m tellin’.”

  “Go then, get out of my sight,” Molly spat at him, through clenched teeth, closing her eyes with the weariness of it all. “Your parents’ll be hearing from me when Miss Brierley’s funeral’s out of the way, so you can tell them what you like. I know you’ve been in here, tampering with all my stuff, and I know what you’ve been up to. You need a psychiatrist, Sid Edge.”

  She shut her back door, bolted it, then sat down again. The two dogs scratched at the kitchen door, puzzled by the non-appearance of breakfast. But Molly Bover was miles away. There wasn’t a single member of the Edge family for whom she had the least respect, they were trouble-makers and bullies, sly neighbours and dishonest shopkeepers. All who knew them said the same. But this attempt to roast poor Dotty was the sickest thing any of them had ever attempted.

  She might walk up to Winnie’s later and ask her about Sid Edge; she’d taught him in the village school and she’d know if he had any problems. Molly really did wonder whether a boy like that ought to see a doctor. He must have had some kind of brainstorm. What else could you say about a kid who got a dog drunk on home-made beer, then shut it in an oven?

  When he heard her coming back towards the kitchen, Oliver busied himself over the fire. He’d been eavesdropping again, and this time he’d heard everything, even the bit about Sid needing to see a psychiatrist. The pathetic little creature must have been curled up inside the kiln, fuddled with beer and dead to the world, when suddenly. . . Sid Edge. . . It could so easily have been turned to a little heap of ash.

  Oliver shuddered. What twisted thinking could prompt anyone to do a thing like that? A brain that dreamed up such a trick must be horribly unbalanced, if not insane. He went outside to empty the ash bucket and met Molly in the rear passage with the shivering poodle in her arms. She didn’t comment on his dressing gown, or on the fact that he was helpfully laying the fire at seven in the morning. She just said, “Oh, hello, Oliver,” in a tight kind of voice, and he heard her slamming the kettle down on to the stove.

  The ash bin was full of purple cloth, singed brown by flames. Rose Salt had come in from the play rehearsal, pulled Tony’s Slasher costume apart, and tried to burn it. Molly, stunned by the news of Kath Brierley, and sitting on her own in the dark kitchen had only realized what was happening when the thing was half consumed. She didn’t know what it was but it could easily set the chimney alight. She’d thrown water on the fire and later stuffed everything in the bin. Rose Salt had been packed off to bed; Molly was in no mood for her just then.

  Oliver was just going to empty his ash over the charred remnants when something caught his eye, something that shone. He put down his bucket, reached down and pulled it out. It was the little gold horse Rose had made for the front of Tony’s costume, on a scrap of purple cloth now only about ten inches square. Miraculously, the fire had puttered and died without touching it.

  He had a good look at it. Rose ought to go to art college, not stay at Elphins, washing floors; the horse was beautiful. Embroidery could make pictures heavy and lifeless but this little creature had all the grace and elegance of an artist’s drawing.

  But as he stared at it a coldness crept over Oliver, striking through his winceyette pyjamas and his warm dressing gown, sending shudders down his backbone. For a split second the prancing colt had looked like something else, no longer a little horse in arched profile, but a thing with a face. He was aware of its burning, heavy stare, and of a darkness in its eyes that came up and hit him like a fist.

  His eyes were watering as he stood in the damp garden by the row of dustbins, and he groped in his pocket for his spectacles. But they were up in the bedroom, on top of his Stang file. Inside that notebook was an account of all that had happened since they’d come to Molly’s, and his photo of the hedge with the bird in it. He blinked and gazed more steadily. The scrap of gold embroidery was a horse again, but the icy coldness was still there inside him, and he remembered Rose’s terror at the play rehearsal, and her tears as she pushed her way
through the tittering villagers.

  What had she seen? And what had Colin seen in that awful nightmare? It may well have been a dream, but you couldn’t ignore it, nor what had happened inside Edges’ shop. He’d been wrong to attack Colin for blaming the accident on them. They came into everything, even when they were miles away.

  Oliver went hurriedly through the kitchen and told Molly he was going to get dressed. The little gold horse was crumpled up in his dressing gown pocket. He ought to destroy it, burn it or fling it into Blake’s Pit with Prill’s old French doll. It was evil.

  The darkness was creeping over them now, like a foul and poisonous mist, like something that seeped under doors and through keyholes, like a shadow that lay in wait, hovering and gathering itself in silence, getting ready to spring. Things were coming to a head.

  He spent ages sitting on his bed before getting dressed. A whole hour later Colin opened one eye and saw him huddled in his dressing gown, poring over a notebook. “Are you OK, Oll?” he said. He looked a bit red round the eyes, and as he’d come to, Colin had heard him muttering, “Proof, we must have proof.”

  “Proof? What of, for heaven’s sake? Proof about what, Oliver?”

  But there was no answer. Oliver couldn’t explain because he couldn’t see the whole picture yet, and what he could see he didn’t understand. Prill was frightened to death by what was happening in Stang, and Colin had started to have violent nightmares. He wasn’t going to show them his picture of the dunnet, or Rose’s horse, or tell them about Sid Edge trying to kill the poodle, not yet anyway. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do anything.

  Just what had to be done Oliver didn’t know yet, but he was becoming more and more certain about one thing. It was all up to him.