The Secret of Crickley Hall

station. Why should she drop her guard now?

'Still refusing, eh, Magda? Is it a game you're playing so you don't have to confess? Either way it's good, it's very good. You can't tell tales on your brother, can you? People would never understand why Augustus did the things he did, especially nowadays. Discipline is an old-fashioned concept.'

He leaned forward and peered at her intently, his cruel eyes searching for any sign of recognition, of recollection. She remained impassive.

She remembered many things though, dear Maurice. How he had spied on the other children, reporting their misbehaviours to either herself or Augustus. And she also remembered what she and Maurice had done to the young teacher whose prettiness was marred by the ugliness of her withered arm. Oh, they had taken good care of her, the prying, interfering little wretch, but it was Maurice who had killed her, creeping up behind the silly girl and bashing in her head with one of the stouter logs piled on the boiler-room floor for winter fires.

'You remember what we did to the teacher, Magda? How we killed her next door to the cellar? I was, shall we say, agitated afterwards, but then I was a mere child of twelve years. You took charge, you knew what had to be done to conceal the crime. We carried Nancy Linnet's body back into the cellar and dropped it into the well. You were brisk and efficient, utterly cold—if there was any trepidation, you hid it from me.'

Yes, she had hidden her panic: she'd had to be strong for Augustus, she could not allow him to be betrayed. It was only at the very end, on the night of the fierce storm, that she'd had to desert her brother in his madness. She had fled with the boy, Maurice Stafford, braving the storm because they were too afraid of Augustus to stay, terrified that in his insanity he would turn on them.

'The game was up that last night, we both knew it. Augustus could no longer be protected from the outsiders, the snoopers, the government people—he had gone too far. In the end, he wreaked havoc, didn't he?'

Those street urchins only had themselves to blame! They were bad boys and girls, incorrigibly wayward! They had planned to run away from Crickley Hall that night and they had to be stopped!

Magda sat perfectly still on her hard chair.

But in the end it was she and Maurice who had run away.

'We defied the storm and reached the train station. We sat on the platform bench, bowed and shivering, until the next morning when the storm had ceased and all was calm once more. But when the train came along, quite early, you refused to get on it with me. You had sunk into yourself, Magda. You refused to speak and you wouldn't be moved. At the last moment I caught the train myself. Your face was as expressionless as it is now. Like stone. I could tell you how I survived in the city on my own for almost a year before I found someone to take me in, but I'm afraid it wouldn't mean a thing to you.'

He rose to his feet.

'You really are mad, aren't you?' he said.

Certainly not. She was just… just cautious, that was all. She could talk if she wanted to, couldn't she? Of course she could. It was safer this way, though. They left her alone now, didn't even try to coax her to speak. To confess. Oh, she could talk all right, but this way was best. This way they thought she knew nothing and could tell nothing. Hah! Fools, all of them.

'You're harmless, I can see. I came today because I was curious after all these years. I saw you once—what was it, thirty years ago?—when they kept you in a locked cell, and you were as silent as you are now. You've grown old, Magda. You must be at least ninety-three, ninety-five? I don't suppose you even remember me and I doubt you remember anything about those days in Crickley Hall.'

He walked to the door, paused and turned back to regard her.

'Let me assure you,' he said with a faint smile, I've never forgotten Augustus Theophilus Cribben and all the things he—and you, Magda—taught me. I hear his call even now. He won't be denied, do you know that?'

Magda refused to look at him. She went on staring at the blank wall.

'At least, Magda, you seem to be at peace in your lunacy.'

The visitor left the room.

A lunatic? Yes, perhaps she was. Perhaps all the years of silence had finally made her that way.

But she wasn't as mad as Maurice. His madness shone from his eyes.

Magda listened to his footsteps fade away. Inwardly she smiled, but her face did not change expression. Someone might be watching.

53: THE MORTUARY

Detective Inspector Kim Michael was waiting for Gabe at the mortuary entrance, which was in the basement of a huge teaching hospital. They shook hands in a perfunctory manner, both men wanting to get through the ordeal of viewing the body as quickly as possible.

DI Michael was just below average height but fit-looking, with dark-brown hair and intelligent greeny-brown eyes that softened his tough features. From experience Gabe knew the policeman was a good listener, whose sound advice and quiet encouragement had helped Eve and Gabe through the bad times after Cam's disappearance. He looked at Gabe sympathetically now.

'How was the journey?' he asked as he led the engineer down a long sloping corridor with pale two-tone green walls.

'I used the motorways, made good time, although the rain didn't help,' Gabe replied.

DI Michael nodded. He stopped before black plastic swingdoors, pushing open one side and ushering Gabe through. The engineer found himself in another but broader corridor with doors left and right, all of them closed except one, the nearest.

I've got the clothes ready for you,' the detective said, indicating the open doorway. 'Let's see how you do with them before we try anything else.'

Gabe entered and found himself in a viewing room, a long plain table on one side, a few metal chairs set against another wall. To his right was an interior window, the drapes behind the glass closed. It was a viewing window and he wondered if the child's corpse was already lying there beyond the curtains. There was a door beside the window.

On the long table was a semi-clear plastic bag in which items of clothing were bundled. Gabe could just make out a faded reddish jumper lying on a blue anorak.

DI Michael went to the bag and began to pull the rumpled clothing out, laying each item along the table. The woollen jumper was ragged and now closer to pink in colour; when Cam had worn it, the jumper was a vivid red. Gabe almost choked. There were holes where the wool had unravelled or had been nibbled by scavenging fish. He managed to get a grip on himself before moving on to the blue anorak. The colour had paled but it was truer to its original tone than the woollen jumper. Next to this was a tiny vest that had been white but was now a dirty grey, as were the small underpants close by. The material of both was torn and punctured as though river fish had gnawed through to get at the meat beneath. That image caused Gabe to waver and the detective held on to his arm to steady him.

Gabe forced himself to continue looking. The little pair of shrunken jeans came next; they were so drained of colour they were almost white in places.

'As I told you on the phone,' Kim Michael said, 'the shoes are missing, but I forgot to say the socks were gone too. We think the underwater currents took them away. As far as the pathologist can tell, there are no signs of violence on the body before drowning.'

'You're sure?'

'As sure as we can be after all this time…'

Gabe could not tear his eyes away from the shrunken, damaged garments displayed on the table. He wanted to sink to his knees before them and wail his son's name, wanted to scream denial. But there was no doubt—the clothing had been Cameron's. Now, as if to confirm the gut-wrenching truth of it, he noticed the tiny crocodile logo stitched to the jumper's chest, some of the stitching broken, the crocodile no longer green but a colourless smudge with only the outline defined. Cam had loved that little cartoon emblem.