rate.'
Even the swirling fog could not hide the dereliction. The rafters had conceded finally to the perseverance of an army of woodworm and had collapsed, showering the slates down inside, smashing most of the upper storey, splintering it right down to ground-floor level. A heap of debris; soon the remnants of the outer walls would crumble and that would be the end of the once-splendid home of the Droy family.
Others were converging on the clearing now, whistles being blown to halt the advancing line of searchers whilst the ruined building was investigated. Houliston groaned to himself as he spied Fillery. The CID man would make a meal of this lot; they could be here for hours.
'You come inside with me, constable,' the detective motioned to Houliston.
'You wait here, keeper. I expect you know this place well, better than most of us here, but we'll call you if we need you.' We don't like civilian involvement unless it's absolutely unavoidable.
'No, sir, I never come here.' Bean's tone was one of uncertainty, reluctance.
'We don't shoot the wood any more. It ain't safe.'
Too many bogs, eh,' Fillery cut in quickly. He didn't want this yokel to begin retelling the Droy legends. They were concerned with facts not rumours today.
'You follow me, constable, and we'll take a look inside. We'll have to tread carefully, we don't want the whole lot collapsing on top of us.'
Somehow the girders still held the doorway open, the door itself long gone, a dark dusty square remaining. Threatening, defiant; almost an 'abandon hope all ye who enter here', Houliston thought. But Fillery was moving forward with a cautious eagerness, peering inside, producing a torch and swinging its beam on the interior. 'Let's go inside,' he said.
The torchlight revealed walls covered with moss and lichen, condensation which streamed down the stonework and dripped steadily into puddles on the floor. Houliston swallowed; the sound reminded him of a radio play he used to listen to as a youngster, propping his bedroom door open at night so that he could hear the wireless in the living room downstairs. A headless body in an empty house, the steady drip-drip of blood from the landing to hallway. Ugh!
'Look!' Houliston jumped visibly as Fillery spoke, saw the CID man drop to his knees. 'Now that is very interesting!'
The other checked the instinctive 'what?' The detective force invariably adopted a superior attitude over the uniformed branch, a kind of Holmes and Watson relationship; surely you see what I see.
Jock Houliston leaned forward, peered intently at the floor. He saw slate chips and fragments, a mound of thick moss — and clearly imprinted on the latter was a naked human footprint. He felt his flesh go cold, start to creep, glanced back towards the doorway. Outside he could hear Roy Bean talking to some of the soldiers. Outside — it seemed a million miles away right now.
'It's fresh, too,' Fillery breathed, 'see how the impression has squelched right down into the spongy moss which hasn't sprung back into place yet. A matter of hours ago, I'd say. Look, there's another. and another. Going right on into the hallway!' PC Houliston didn't want to follow his companion. Somebody was in here, there was no doubt about that. Fine, they were hunting a fugitive and that aspect did not worry him; if only it had been anywhere else except Droy House! The old stories came flooding back. Tales recounted by his father of how a few generations ago the Droys were the cruel landowners of these lands, how they assisted the Customs' officers in the apprehension of smugglers coming ashore on this deserted stretch of coast beyond the wood. Prisoners were taken, brought back here, some terrible tortures inflicted upon them. The villagers heard the screams in the dead of night and neither the smugglers nor their contraband were heard of again. Stories, fables. Fiction. You could tell yourself that any other place except here.
'Let's see where they go to.' Fillery's voice echoed in the confined space as he moved forward, his torchbeam scanning every patch of shadow. Houiiston followed; he didn't have any other choice. Oh God, why couldn't all this have waited another year?
'That must be the cellar.' Suddenly the white beam was focused on what looked like an open trap door in the corner of the hallway. Even Jock Houliston did not need the sharp-eyed detective to show him the piles of rubble that had been cleared from it; more moss, more footmarks. going right on down into the bowels of Droy House. 'Whoever it is, they're down there, all right!'
Whispering now, the detective alert, his hand in the pocket of his raincoat. He was armed, he would shoot if he had to.
Descending a step at a time, shining the torch on ahead of him, leaving no niche in the ancient stonework unexplored. There was no debris down here, the cellar having been protected from structural collapse, just bare wet walls and an overpowering stench of damp staleness. And so very cold. You sensed the evil.
Houiiston moved closer to the detective, didn't want to be left alone in this awful blackness. He prepared himself for the gruesome sight of the murdered girl; she just had to be down here. Maybe Dark, too. And Foster. The place was bigger than you would have thought, like ancient catacombs stretching on and on, the dripping roof supported by stone pillars. All manner of frightening thoughts same to plague the Droy policeman; suppose the roof collapsed with the vibrations of their movements, trapped them alive down here. Catalepsy. Childhood bogies emerging from the cupboard. You do believe in spooks. Can't you hear them whispering in the darkness, touching you with their cold clammy fingers?
'Christ on a bike!' Detective-Sergeant Fillery pulled up so suddenly that Houiiston cannoned into him, clutched at him to save himself from falling. They both stared, words were superfluous. In the torchlight they saw that they had reached the end wall of the cellar, built in a kind of bow, maybe eight feet high, some fifteen feet across.
And there fastened to the stonework was a series of rusted manacles, five or six pairs of them with matching leg irons a couple of feet from the floor beneath them. You saw in your mind the pain-wracked bodies of centuries ago, broken limbs threatening to jerk out of their sockets; heard their cries of torment. Oh Jesus, you wanted to slap your hands over your ears to try and shut out the pitiful wails, the screams of women and children. You smelled death, the stench would never leave this place, the evil here would never die.
'Well. there's nobody here.' Houliston uttered the words, a hint that they should be leaving. Something inside you told you to run, get the hell out. But the sharp-eyed Fillery had spotted something else. He was on his knees again, poking on the floor with a forefinger and holding it up to his nose, gingerly giving it a lick with his tongue. Then he straightened up, turned back to his uniformed colleague.
'Blood,' he spoke in a whisper, 'fresh blood!'
'Oh Lord.' Houliston recoiled a pace.
'And more footprints.' The detective's features were pale in the reflected glow from the torch. 'All of 'em coming in here, stopping at this infernal wall. but none going back out!'
'That's. impossible!'
'Yes, if you look at it realistically, but it could be a trick though Christ alone knows what anybody would get out of setting up a thing like this. Undoubtedly this is an old torture chamber going back to the early eighteenth century. Not that that is going to figure in any way in our problem.' Somehow the detective's voice did not ring true. He, too, was scared beneath the bluff facade he had created.
'Well, there's definitely nobody in the house,' Fillery told the waiting group as they emerged into the foggy clearing. The ground floor and the cellar are empty and the upper storey has completely fallen through. Let's continue with the search outside.'
PC Houliston checked his watch. 11.30. God, they must have been in that place almost an hour. In spite of this foul stinking mist it was a relief to be outside.
The line fanned out again, waited for the whistle to blow to send them forward again. If anything the fog was thicker, creating weird unearthly shapes out of the twisted marsh trees, boughs that became arms making threatening gestures at these intruders; the boles demonic faces screwed up in hate and fury. This is still the land of the old Droys, begone from it whilst you are still unharmed!
Roy Bean whistled tunelessly through his buck teeth, a habit of his when he experienced a sense of inferiority. He almost always whistled on shooting days when he was surrounded by the visiting gentry with their Range Rovers and Purdey or Boss guns. Deep down he hated them, hated his own role which was to serve. Sometimes when this obsession really got the better of him he would take his.22 rifle, fitted with a silencer, up to the feeding points in the woods and pick off a few handsome cock pheasants as they pecked the grain he had thrown down for them. Rader, the butcher in town, would always give him a few quid for birds on the side. It could
