'Mary!'
She turns and looks up. She sees, rushing down on her, a wild-eyed creature mouthing strange words, his arms flailing high and wild, his legs tiring now and sending him staggering like a drunkard. The flowers fall from her hand. She turns to flee. He shouts again. She runs blindly. The edge of the ghyll is near. She looks back to see his outstretched hands descending upon her.
And she falls.
'I saw two things when I got down beside her. I saw that she was not Mary. And I saw that she was dead.'
Novello glared at him, trying not to believe, and failing. She had wanted a trapped monster, not a crazed father. She opened her mouth to ask skeptical questions, but Dalziel gave her a silencing glance and said, 'So what did you do then?'
'I picked up the body and began to climb out of the ghyll. I think I was going to carry her back down the valley and seek help, though I knew that for her the time of help was over. Halfway up the slope, on a ledge, the dog attacked me, biting at my ankles. I had to stop to try and chase it away. Finally I kicked it so hard, it fell to the bed of the ghyll and lay there, still snarling up at me. It was now I noticed this gap behind a large flake of rock. When I peered in I saw that this must have been some kind of den for the child. It contained the kind of things a little girl would choose to have around her… I remember from the days when…'
He looked at his wife, whose face had lost all color. Elizabeth was holding one of her hands and Arne Krog was gripping the other arm.
'I laid her in there, thinking that this would be a good place to leave her while I went for assistance. And then I started thinking of what that meant, of telling people, of seeing her parents perhaps… I found I did not have the strength for that. Over the years I had grown to think I had the strength for anything, but I knew I hadn't got the strength for that. So I blocked the entrance to her little den. All I wanted to do was give myself time to think. I was not trying to hide her forever. I would not do that to her parents. I know all too well what not knowing where your child's body lies can do a parent's mind.'
'So why'd you cover your traces with that dead sheep?'
It was Wield, who'd come back into the chapel unnoticed. 'I'm the one who found her,' he went on accusingly. 'I saw how hard you'd worked to make sure she stayed hid.'
'The dog was still close,' said Wulfstan. 'I chased it off with stones but I was worried that it might come back. I thought the dead sheep might prevent it, or any predator, from penetrating behind to where I'd laid the child. And I went back to the car along the fellside and drove home. I don't think anybody saw me.'
Oh, yes, they did, thought Pascoe. Another little girl who, thank God, imagined she was seeing a scene from the realstunreal world of her storybooks.
'And exactly when were you going to come forward and give us the benefit of this information, sir?' said Dalziel with functionary courtesy.
'After the concert. Tomorrow morning,' said Wulfstan. 'I have been putting my affairs, both business and personal, in order for some time now. These last three days have given me time to complete the process, and I thought I would not wish to spoil Elizabeth's… to spoil my other daughter's debut at the festival.'
He looked toward Elizabeth now. What passed between them was hard to read.
Affection? Understanding? Apology? Regret? All of these, though in what proportion and in what direction was impossible to say.
'Owt else you want to tell us,' said Dalziel, '-l for instance why you've been going up the Corpse Road these past few weeks? And why you started putting your affairs in order?'
Wulfstan gave him a distant, almost headmasterly nod of approval.
'I think you know, Mr. Dalziel,' he said. 'Fifteen years ago I believed you were irredeemably stupid, now I see I may have been mistaken. About the irredeemable element at least. I started going up to the ridge of Lang Neb when I heard that the reservoir was shrinking so much that Dendale village was reappearing. I make my living from the sun, so I appreciated the irony that it was solar heat that was going to bring that living to an end.'
'How exactly?' said Dalziel. 'Just so's everyone knows what you're talking about.'
He glanced toward Chloe Wulfstan. Pascoe, probably the most advanced Dalzielogist in the civilized world, read the message with little difficulty.
Tell her now publicly, so that if she knew before, no one will be able to trick it out of her.
An unexpected chivalry? Or just a subtle turn of the screw to make sure Wulfstan kept on talking?
Whichever, it was working.
'You will find, probably have found already, the remains of a man in the ruins of Heck. That man is-was- Benny Lightfoot. I put him there. I left him there to drown. I am solely responsible for his death. My motive was, I think, obvious.'
Dalziel looked toward Novello, who was scowling with concentration as she followed events. Hers was one of those rare faces that look prettier in a scowl.
'Not to them as weren't around, mebbe,' said the Fat Man. 'So if you could just give us an outline… You'll have lots of opportunity to dot your p's and q's later.'
As well as studying Dalzielogy, Pascoe collected Dalzieliana. He made a mental note of this one.
'After we had all moved out of the dale and the rains started, I found I couldn't keep away. At all hours of day and night, I'd be hit by this irresistible urge to go back there and wander around on the fellside. You might imagine such a compulsion, often involving a long drive from some distant place, would be relatively easy to control. But when I tell you that the form it took was an absolute certainty that Mary was there, wandering lost and frightened, and if I didn't go and find her she would certainly die, you may understand why I always obeyed.
'I never found her, of course. Sometimes I imagined…'
He paused and almost visibly withdrew into himself, and Pascoe went with him, to a dark, rain-swept fellside, where every fitful gleam of light seemed to glance off a head of blond curls and every splash and gurgle of water sang like the echo of childish laughter.
'But one night,' he resumed, 'I heard a noise and saw a figure which wasn't just in my imaginings. It was close by the ruins of Neb Cottage, near where you were found a little later,' he said to Elizabeth, who returned his gaze blankly. 'It was, of course, Benny Lightfoot.'
Another living ghost haunting the valley, finding what comfort he could in the ruined remains of the only existence he had ever wanted.
But there had been nothing for his comfort in this encounter with a fellow ghost.
'I should have brought him in and handed him over to you,' said Wulfstan to Dalziel. 'But I didn't trust you not to let him go again. No. That's too simple. That's too much of an excuse. I wanted him for myself because I felt sure I could get out of him things about my daughter that you with your more restricted methods never could.'
'You tortured him,' said Novello.
'I beat him,' said Wulfstan. 'With my fists. I never used instruments then or later. Does that make it better? It is your area of expertise, not mine. And when I couldn't get anything out of him and I saw dawn lightening the sky, I forced him down to Heck. I knew the cellar was still accessible because I'd cleared a gap sufficient for my entrance in my search for Mary, in case she'd gone back to her old home and taken shelter there. I bound him tight with strips of cloth I tore from his own jacket, and the next night I returned with lengths of chain, and padlocks, and staples, and made him secure. All I wanted was for him to tell me what he'd done to her, where she was. But he wouldn't. No matter what I did to him, he wouldn't. I thought it was because he believed once he'd told me what I wanted to know, I'd kill him. And I swore by everything I held holy, by the memory of Mary herself, that I'd let him live if only he'd tell me what I needed to know. But still he wouldn't talk. Why? Why? All you had to do was tell me…'
He was back there again, and this time they were all with him, in that squalid hole with the rising waters lapping ever higher, and the two faces so close together, both so contorted with pain, that perhaps it was difficult to tell in that dim light who was torturer, who victim.
Except that one went back each morning to a world of warmth and light while the other lay bound in chains, surrounded by darkness and lapped with freezing water.
Then it was easy to tell, thought Pascoe.
He said, 'So he never talked. And you let him die.'
Wulfstan said, 'Yes. I'm not sure if I meant to. If I'd have been able to. But I had to go away for a couple of
