The Cure of Souls

Reliable? Merrily sat in the circle of light and prodded in Robert Morrell’s home number. Really?

Little Jane Watkins, now learning that there was no such thing as a free holiday, had done it again. While she hadn’t actually initiated the spirit sessions, she had been involved, albeit peripherally.

Peripherally? She’d had a finger on the damned glass!

The phone was ringing out at the other end. Morrell was going to be in bed getting a pre-holiday early night, sleeping the sleep of the self-righteous. The phone would also awaken his wife and kids – always hard to get kids off to sleep on the eve of a holiday.

Merrily wondered how easily Jane would sleep tonight. Getting it into proportion, she couldn’t really imagine herself as a kid – the black-clad, black-lipsticked Siouxie and the Banshees fan – standing up and warning her mates that their ouija game was actually a form of psychic Russian roulette, then walking primly away, to communal jeering.

Not even if she’d been a vicar’s daughter.

‘Yes?’ The woman’s voice wasn’t sleepy, but it wasn’t exactly accommodating either.

‘Mrs Morrell? Could I speak to your husband? I’m sorry it’s so late. My name’s Merrily Watkins.’

‘One moment.’ Resentful now.

Merrily waited. The fact remained that Jane hadn’t even mentioned the incident afterwards, even knowing it would be in confidence. This hurt; she’d thought they’d got beyond secrets, beyond concealment. She’d thought there wasn’t anything they couldn’t discuss any more. She’d thought they were friends, for God’s sake.

The phone was snatched up. ‘Mrs Watkins, I have to tell you that in just under seven hours, we’re leaving for the airport with three small children.’

‘Look, I’m really sorry. But this is something I need to know and if I left it until tomorrow I’d be doing it behind your back, which—’

‘If this is about what I think it’s about, I’d be immensely glad if you did look into it behind my—’ Morrell calmed down. ‘All right, I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult year. I need a holiday. Go on.’

‘I’ll be very quick. I understand the organizer of – what we were talking about – is a girl called Layla Riddock.’

He breathed heavily into the phone. ‘And you’re asking if I’m surprised?’

‘I can tell that you’re not – which is interesting.’

‘Before we take it any further,’ Morrell said, ‘anything I tell you has got to be absolutely unattributable. And I mean—’

‘Of course.’

‘Because normally I’d only discuss any of my students in this way with the police, and only then if there was some suspicion of—’

‘Sure.’

‘All right,’ Morrell said. ‘Layla Riddock… God almighty, do I really need this? Layla is… a dominant kind of girl. Stepdaughter of Allan Henry, yes?’

‘Allan Henry of Allan Henry—?’

‘Homes. With all the baggage that implies, and more. Obviously, I don’t have an overview of their domestic situation, but if I had to guess, I’d say that, like a lot of wealthy men with potentially problematical stepchildren, he’s been throwing money at her for years. Buying her compliance, until such time as she leaves home. She’s driving around, for instance, in the kind of car I couldn’t afford. Well… I probably could, but you know what I’m saying…’

‘Mmm.’

‘She’s an intelligent girl, but she’s got away with too much at home, which is why she expects to get away with the minimum of work at school. Swans around the place under this thin veneer of disdain at having to spend her days with children. You getting the picture?’

‘A bully, would you say?’

‘Not in the physical sense, far as I know. To be honest, I don’t think she’d lower herself. I think she can be intimidating enough, without resorting to physical violence. I mean, she’s quite…’

The line went quiet. Jane’s word had been ‘sinister.’

‘Something you’re thinking about, particularly?’ Merrily pulled her sermon-pad into the lamplight, reached for a fibretip. ‘Something which might save us both some time?’

She heard him breathe down his nose. ‘I’m thinking, inevitably, about the Christmas Fair we held at the school last year. Did you come?’

‘No, I was… a bit busy before Christmas. And Jane was off school, she wasn’t very—No, we didn’t come.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I can tell you we were all quite surprised, to say the least, when Ms Riddock volunteered to take part in the fund-raising – a Christmas Fair being something she might normally consider well beneath her. What she did, she approached the teacher in charge of the event and volunteered to set up a fortune-telling stall.’

‘Oh, did she?’

‘Yeah,’ he said ruefully. ‘I thought that might get you. Made a few of the staff sit up when she appeared on the day in full gypsy costume. Very exotic – and very expensive, too, according to my wife. Long, low-cut black dress, big gold earrings – gold, not brass. Black hat with a dark veil. All very mature, very mysterious, just a bit sinister, I suppose – but that may be hindsight.’

She always looks… tainted, somehow, Jane had said. Merrily lit a cigarette.

‘Some of the staff had reservations from the start,’ Morrell said. ‘But as it was the first time in anyone’s memory that Layla Riddock’d shown any enthusiasm for anything apart from burning rubber outside the gates, they weren’t inclined to push it. So they set her up in the hall, back of the stage, behind a curtain. Somebody painted a sign – Gypsy Layla – and, as all the other stalls were fairly routine, people were queuing up to cross her palm with silver. Men, too, once they’d seen her.’

‘She’s very attractive?’

‘I suppose you would say she exudes a certain hormonal something. Something you don’t often find at school Christmas fairs, anyway.’

‘And was she good at telling fortunes?’

‘She was bloody good at frightening people,’ Robert Morrell said bitterly. ‘Wouldn’t have frightened me, as you probably realize by now. But I accept that a lot of people are taken in by that kind of rubbish, against all their better instincts. Anyway, I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but I gather that the usual routine is to tell the customers they’re going to cross the water, or come into some money, live long and happy lives, have lots of children.’

‘What was she using? Crystal ball?’

‘I wouldn’t know. She was certainly reading palms at some stage. Anyway, the staff started to notice that very few people were coming out actually smiling. And the ones who did, their smiles tended to be rather strained. Then some granny emerges very white-faced and almost fainting. One of the female staff sits her down, brings her a cup of tea, learns that Layla’s looked at her palm and advised her to start getting her affairs in order because she ain’t… got… long.’

‘Oh.’

‘Quite. There were several others, we found out later. One pregnant woman, for instance, had been told to prepare for the worst. Or, as Layla apparently put it, “I see a withering in your womb.” ’

‘You found this out on the night?’

‘Not all of it. Some of the stories came out over a period of days. But, I suppose, the atmosphere on the night itself… well, as Christmas Fairs go, it’s fair to say there was gradually less of an ambience of comfort and joy than one might have wished for.’

‘She wasn’t stopped?’

‘Oh, she was stopped. Eventually. One of the parents had been kicking up about it long before it became widely known that she was taking people’s money for predicting death and sickness. The guy was objecting on religious grounds. Eventually, to my shame, we had to use that as a way of bringing it to a