The Wounded Snake Read online

‘Arr. Right enough. Them as you find wriggling away, all blind in the sunshine, when you turns over a stone. That’s what we calls them hereabouts. The long crippler.’

  The name sent an unaccountable shiver down Hilary’s spine. She had always liked slowworms. But why were they called the long crippler?

  Something was buzzing at the back of her mind. Of course! It was the name of Gavin Standforth’s bestselling book.

  ‘That’s a strange name, the Crippler. Is it supposed to do people harm? These sacred wells were usually associated with healing.’

  ‘Arr, so they do say. The Toad for troubles with your skin, the Snake for snake bite and when the Black Dog sits on your shoulder, and him there,’ he nodded at the still pool at Hilary’s feet, ‘he’s supposed to be good for eyesight.’

  Hilary thought of the reptiles also known as blindworms. It seemed an unlikely association with restoring sight. But then, the warty toad wasn’t the picture of smooth, healthy skin either. It must be the magic of opposites.

  ‘But why the Crippler?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’d nothing to do with the naming of ’un.’

  The old man started to move on, up the steep lane by which Hilary had approached. The sound of his stick echoed between the blank, stone walls. Hilary listened, as it faded around the bend.

  Why had she not heard him coming? Or had her brain, busy with her surroundings, not registered the tapping of his stick?

  She looked down. The bunches of flowers looked incongruously bright against the dark wet stone. There was a curious ambiguity about this place. The sacred with the sinister.

  In her experience, holy wells were usually named after saints. She had never associated them with reptiles.

  Still, she reminded herself, she had a novel to write. Or at least, a setting to evoke. And where better than this?

  She needed a place to sit. There was no bench, no convenient wall or ledge. She looked down at her feet. The stone by which she had stepped down into the pool made the only convenient perch. Hilary lowered herself on to it and rested her feet on the damp cobbles. It was not the most comfortable seat, but it would have to do.

  She took out the notebook from her shoulder bag and began to write.

  It was not until she lifted her tired wrist and looked down at the pages she had covered with scrawl that the memory of the first time she had heard that strange name came back to her. The Long Crippler. She saw in her mind the book room stacked with copies of Gavin Standforth’s output. The slowworm on the cover.

  Then she remembered that Lin Bell had been at her elbow, telling her the superstition that slowworms were said to lame horses. There was a curious ambiguity about this place.

  Healing or harming?

  EIGHT

  It was a surprise to look at her watch and find how much time had passed. She was pleasantly surprised by the amount she had got down in her notebook as she had sat absorbing the atmosphere of the Leechwells.

  At one point, a pair of boys running down the lane swinging conkers had stared at her perched on the edge of the well and laughed, but Hilary had waved them on with a cheery greeting. Apart from that, the three lanes had remained almost eerily quiet.

  Her burgeoning story was set in Elizabethan times, of course – she had expected that. Her characters were thus imbued with the beliefs, both Christian and not a little pagan, which hung about such holy waters. With what a strange mixture of thoughts young Bartholomew, her chief protagonist, must have approached these wells, concerned for his ailing grandfather. The wells were for healing. Why else would they be called Leechwells? But there was something about their guardian spirits – the Toad, the Snake, and that strange local name, the Long Crippler – which prickled the hairs upon his neck. On my neck, Hilary admitted to herself. There would have been fear, as well as hope, as he approached the pool. Fear that what ailed his beloved grandfather might not be entirely natural. That it might need a supernatural remedy. Fear of the powers that could grant it.

  There had been a young woman, waiting at the well for him. Veronica would like that. Hilary had not intended the romantic angle, but it had presented itself without her conscious volition. Perhaps there was a softer side to her than she cared to admit. She had evoked the setting in front of her – a strange one, even in the twenty-first century – and got as far as Bartholomew confessing to Miriam the doubts that gnawed at him about his grandfather’s illness. She had no doubt that there was going to be something sinister about it.

  It was a promising start. She wondered where Veronica’s imagination had taken her, in the flower-lined walk above the tiltyard.

  A more analytical part of her brain wondered whether it was a good idea to plunge into her story like this, without constructing a fully fledged plot. Surely detective fiction depended on careful planning, so that at each stage the author knew the path down which she was leading her readers and where she intended to spring on them the surprise – perfectly logical with hindsight, of course – at the end. As it was, she seemed to be making it up as she went along.

  She looked up from the shallow pool at her feet. The three lanes that converged on the Leechwells were still deserted. It gave her an odd feeling that she might have been transported out of her own time into an unknown world.

  No doubt the events of last night had influenced her subconscious.

  Still, it really was time she transported herself somewhere else.

  It was with a feeling of satisfaction that Hilary drove back into the car park at Morland Abbey. It was five to eleven when she hurried under the archway towards the cloisters. People were appearing from different quarters of the house and grounds, converging on Lady Jane’s Chamber and the promised coffee. Should she go straight there or carry on around the corner to see if Veronica was still in the romantic gardens where she had hoped to set her story?

  It was not a conscious decision. Her feet led her around the garth to the less formal lawns that sloped away on the opposite side to the Great Barn. She turned right, down some steps, on to the walk below the wall of the private garden. A line of massive close-set yew trees confronted her. Lower still, the level rectangle of grass that was once Morland’s tiltyard, created by the Woodleighs after the monks’ eviction. Hilary’s ready imagination peopled it with armoured and helmeted knights showing off their military skills and horsemanship. Henry VIII, she recalled, had been a notable jouster, until he was thrown from his armoured horse, which fell on top of him. It was the ulcerated wounds to his legs and the forced inactivity which followed that had reduced him from a muscular man in the prime of life to the bloated, overweight figure of later portraits.

  Veronica, on the other hand, was given to less earthy imaginings. She would surely have found the romance she wanted between a dashing knight and one of the ladies in extravagant Tudor gowns and pearled headdresses who thronged the seats of the tiltyard, now reduced to steeply terraced banks of grass.

  It was on that long walk above the tiltyard, with its autumnal line of flowerbeds, that Hilary had expected to find her friend, if she had not already succumbed to the lure of coffee and homemade biscuits.

  Vistas of lavender and gold stretched away to where more stone steps led up to higher terraces. At intervals, benches invited the visitor to sit and take in the charming view. Veronica was seated on none of them.

  With a click of impatience, Hilary turned to retrace her steps to the cloister garth and Lady Jane’s Chamber.

  ‘Hilary!’ The cry stayed her.

  Veronica was hastening towards her, her long legs covering the ground faster than her normally more dignified pace. She was coming, not along the level path past the flowerbed but up the steps from the tiltyard behind the yews.

  Her face was pink, her breathing unsteady, as she caught up with Hilary.

  ‘I’ve had the strangest morning!’

  ‘Do you want to tell me now, or over coffee?’

  ‘Hilary, this could be serious.’

  ‘OK, OK. Here, sit dow
n and tell me. You look all of a fluster.’

  ‘Well. You know I said I meant to sit on one of the seats along this walk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I did at first. I sat looking out over the tiltyard and the rest of the gardens. Then it occurred to me that, if there was a mystery, it wouldn’t be happening out here in the open. There was something dark and mysterious about this line of yews. So I found a place – down there at the foot of the trees – where I could sit and imagine I was hearing something, someone, on the other side. Only then …’

  ‘You did.’

  Veronica turned astonished blue eyes on her friend. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘What else would you be leading up to? Go on. I’m all ears.’

  ‘It was Gavin’s voice. I didn’t know who he was talking to at first. He said, “Well, it happened. It didn’t result in a death this time. But she’s got to be stopped.”

  ‘And then another voice said, “How?” I found it hard to place at first. We haven’t heard much from her yet and it was just one word. But it didn’t seem like that rather breathless way Melissa has of talking.’

  ‘Theresa?’ Hilary suggested.

  ‘I guessed it must be her.’

  Hilary pictured the stouter and shorter of Gavin’s assistants. ‘So what next?’

  ‘“We need to play this carefully,” Gavin said. “It mustn’t look suspicious.”

  ‘“So what then?”

  ‘“Leave it to me. I’ll shut her up.”

  ‘“And what about the old biddy on the top floor?”

  ‘Then their voices began to trail away. I peeped around the yew tree and I was right. It was Theresa with him. I could see them walking along here above the tiltyard, going away from me. From behind, I couldn’t see anything wrong.’

  Hilary said, ‘Perhaps there wasn’t.’ She put out a hand to stay Veronica’s protest. ‘All right, all right. I grant you it sounds sinister. As though they were talking about Dinah Halsgrove. Finding another way to … silence her. But you have to remember we’re here on a crime weekend. We’ve geared our imaginations up to seeing dastardly deeds around every corner. I can’t immediately think of an innocent explanation for what you heard, but my mind is telling me that that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Maybe Tania and Rob are right, to some extent. It could easily all be part of some scheme they’ve dreamed up to add extra spice to this weekend. Something that might even get this course in the papers. Draw attention to Gavin’s books and any future events like this they may have planned.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Veronica sounded dubious. ‘It sounded as if they were talking about a real death – or at least a death they expected.’

  ‘And what did Theresa mean about “the old biddy on the top floor”?’

  Veronica’s mouth fell open. ‘Hilary! You mean you really don’t …?’

  Hilary’s honest mind pulled her up short.

  ‘You mean me?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘The cheek, coming from her! She’s no oil painting, is she? Still, I have to agree with you. It does sound sinister. So what are you going to do? Are you thinking this is something you ought to report to the police?’

  Veronica flushed a brighter pink. ‘If you must know, that’s what I was thinking. Dinah Halsgrove nearly died. Could they really be responsible for that? Just for a publicity stunt? And why would they have to repeat it?’

  Hilary was silent for a moment. ‘It does seem a bit extreme, I grant you. Let me do some thinking … Look, let’s grab a coffee while there’s still time. I don’t expect there’ll be another corpse – sorry, a real corpse – before the next session begins. We’ll decide about telling the police later.’

  They were rounding the corner of the East Cloister when Hilary shot out a hand to catch Veronica’s arm. ‘I forgot to tell you. I’ve found out the answer to the riddle.’

  Veronica looked at her, puzzled, her mind still clouded by what she had overheard.

  ‘You know,’ Hilary said impatiently, ‘why Gavin chose those odd names for the groups. The Toad, the Snake, the Long … the Slowworm,’ she corrected herself.

  ‘Where did you find out?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ Hilary said smugly. ‘You’re obviously not the slightest bit interested in what I’ve been doing this morning. But I’m going to claim my prize the moment I see Gavin. It was an out-of-the-way part of town, and I didn’t bump into any of the rest of our group, so I’m pretty sure no one else will have discovered it.’

  Lady Jane’s Chamber was full and abuzz with conversation. Evidently their first venture into a writing exercise had loosened tongues as well as pens. People were busy exchanging information about where they had chosen to set their scene and what sort of mystery might grow from it.

  ‘Wait till you hear mine!’ Rob in his shorts was saying.

  There was a knot of people around Gavin. Hilary strode towards them, keen to reveal her discovery and lay claim to the signed copy of his book.

  Before she could reach him, Gavin tapped his spoon against his coffee cup. The many conversations fell silent. Heads turned.

  ‘Well, that didn’t take long.’ Gavin flashed a wide smile at them. ‘I thought it might take you a day or two, since I’d ruled out unfair local knowledge – sorry, Ceri!’ His beam spread further to the woman from their group with the dark curly hair and the knobbly green skirt. ‘But Colonel Truscott here has proved a shining example of military intelligence.’

  ‘All it needed was to get my hands on a copy of the town guide.’ The colonel’s smile was more controlled, self-deprecating, yet satisfied. ‘It’s all there in the Town Trail. Three holy wells flowing into the same pool. The Toad, the Snake and the – funny name, this – the Long Crippler. But of course, you’d know all about that, Gavin. You’ve written the novel. And a very ingenious one it is too.’

  There was a ripple of applause. Hilary stopped dead.

  ‘Too late,’ she muttered to Veronica. ‘I should have come straight upstairs.’

  ‘You knew that? Did you get the town guide too?’

  ‘Did I heck! I’ve got a copy upstairs, but I never thought to look at it. I found the place for myself. I’ve been sitting with my feet in that pool half the morning, writing my first pages of deathless prose. But I didn’t see Colonel Truscott.’

  ‘Oh, Hilary! What a shame! I’m sure that deserves the prize more than simply reading about it on a leaflet.’

  They watched Gavin lift the colonel’s hand in the air, to redoubled clapping. He reached behind him and handed over a handsome hardcover copy of his own book. Hilary could see the large print: ‘By the author of The Long Crippler.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Hilary grunted. ‘I can always get it out of the library.’

  ‘That’s not the point, is it?’ Veronica gave her a small push. ‘You wanted to be first. You wanted to crack the mystery when no one else could.’

  ‘Hmmph!’ Hilary snorted.

  She did feel thwarted.

  NINE

  The three groups retook their seats in circles in different parts of the room. Hilary looked at her fellow sleuths in the Toad group. Veronica; Tania and Rob, the athletic-looking couple with the conspiracy theory about Dinah Halsgrove’s collapse; the affable colonel, still beaming with satisfaction; Ceri, who was obviously a local resident. In addition, there were those two men in their thirties she had met in the book room. The darker one introduced himself as Ben, and the one with the improbably red streak in his hair, more fuchsia than auburn, was Jake. Had they come together, or made contact on arrival as kindred spirits? She decided they were a couple. Finally, there was the small silver-haired woman with bright-grey eyes, Lin Bell. Possibly a Miss Marple type, Hilary decided. Someone who said little but observed much. Though older than Hilary and Veronica, she had a youthful sparkle about her that showed an eagerness to embrace this new challenge.

  Hilary looked beyond them at the Snake group. Jo Walters had attached herself to it. Hila
ry felt a small pang of disappointment. Harry Walters might have come along just for the ride. She noticed he hadn’t rejoined them for coffee. But Jo had shown a lively determination, not only to have a shot at writing detective fiction, but to make a success of it. Scandinavian-type noir, Hilary seemed to remember. Hard to reconcile with her youthful round face and curly blonde hair. Hilary would have liked to hear the results of her morning’s writing. Just now, Jo was frowning, her lips pressed together.

  Gavin and his two assistants were consulting. Theresa was heading for the Toads. How very appropriate, Hilary thought. She looks like a toad herself. Squat, earthy, even if her skin was free of those warty nodules which easily distinguish a toad from the smooth-skinned frog.

  Hilary looked back to see which group Gavin would take. She was alarmed to see for the second time that air of tension between him and Melissa. Melissa was motioning towards the middle group, the Snakes. Gavin looked flustered, as if not sure what to do. The expression on his face was almost frightened.

  They seemed to reach a decision. Melissa came walking purposefully towards the Snakes, her long flowered skirt swinging. Hilary watched her attentively. She favoured the group with a vague smile and seated herself. Nothing seemed out of place now. It must have been Hilary’s imagination.

  Gavin was introducing himself to those in the right-hand corner. The Slowworms. How very appropriate. For the purposes of this weekend, Gavin had cast himself as the Long Crippler, the title of his most successful book.

  Was the Long Crippler truly a healer, as the old man had told her, or a source of danger? Hilary had an uneasy feeling that the figures from the Leechwells had once meant more than today’s generation knew.

  Veronica beside her was whispering in some agitation as Theresa approached.

  ‘What am I going to do? I’ve got nothing I can read out. I was just settling down to write about my setting and begin my story when I heard them. Gavin and Theresa. It was such an odd conversation that I wrote down what they said instead. Ever since then, I’ve been puzzling about what it could have meant. I’ve jotted down some notes. Just theories. Look.’