The Witch Maker Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  By Sally Spencer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  By Sally Spencer

  The Charlie Woodend Mysteries

  THE SALTON KILLINGS

  MURDER AT SWANN’S LAKE

  DEATH OF A CAVE DWELLER

  THE DARK LADY

  THE GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

  DEAD ON CUE

  THE RED HERRING

  DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

  THE ENEMY WITHIN

  A DEATH LEFT HANGING

  THE WITCH MAKER

  THE BUTCHER BEYOND

  DYING IN THE DARK

  STONE KILLER

  A LONG TIME DEAD

  SINS OF THE FATHERS

  DANGEROUS GAMES

  DEATH WATCH

  A DYING FALL

  FATAL QUEST

  The Monika Paniatowski Mysteries

  THE DEAD HAND OF HISTORY

  THE RING OF DEATH

  ECHOES OF THE DEAD

  BACKLASH

  LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER

  A WALK WITH THE DEAD

  THE WITCH MAKER

  A Chief Inspector Woodend Mystery

  Sally Spencer

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2004 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 2004 by Sally Spencer

  The right of Sally Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Spencer, Sally, 1949-

  The witch maker. - (A Chief Inspector Woodend mystery)

  1. Woodend, Charlie (Fictitious character) - Fiction

  2. Police - England - Fiction

  3. Rites and ceremonies - England - Fiction

  4. Detective and mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14[F]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6070-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0104-1 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  Prologue

  The Vale of Hallerton, Central Lancashire, March 1604

  For three days and three nights the wind howled like a soul stretched beyond the point of endurance on the executioner’s rack. It loosened slates and rattled doors. It snapped tender young saplings, and brought down mighty oaks which had stood unchallenged for generations.

  Nor was the wind left to do its work alone. Like the Devil himself, it brought its minions with it. There was a thunder which could have been the roar of a wounded beast. There was a lightning which lit up the night sky as if it were hellish day. Rain flailed down on men, animals and buildings, with a ferocity that had never been known before. It seemed to the terrified villagers that it would never end.

  And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.

  She could see them assembled on the village green, waving their hands in extravagant gestures and pointing towards her cottage. They were drunk. She knew that from the way they were swaying as they spoke. But it did not bother her. Men taken in drink often thought they had found courage, but it was usually no more than the courage to talk bravely. And though they might hate her – and many, if not all of them, undoubtedly did – it would lead to naught.

  ‘And why will it lead to naught, Graymalkin?’ she asked the black cat crouching in a dark corner of the room. ‘Dost you know? Does thy small, clever brain hold the answer?’

  The cat considered her words for a moment, then emitted a cry which was neither a purr nor a growl, but instead more closely resembled the wail of a distressed infant.

  Meg Ramsden laughed delightedly. ‘Aye, thou art right, that is how they sound,’ she said. ‘Like children. Like babes in arms. Because whether in the bed or in the book, I have control over them. And they know it.’

  Several new men appeared on the scene. Four of them were carrying a heavy stone pillar on their shoulders, two others had spades in their hands.

  ‘Let them play their games, Graymalkin,’ Meg Ramsden said. ‘Let them try to inflict on me the fear which clings to them like the morning mist. They will not succeed.’

  She reached up to the shelf on the wall, pulled down a heavy, leather-bound ledger, and opened it out on the table. Though she’d had lessons from the parish priest while he shared her bed, she had never truly learned to read. But that mattered not a jot. All the important words were in her head, and the words on the page, which she now ran her slim fingers over, were no more to her than a magical symbol of her power. Still, she knew enough to recognize some of the spidery writing for what it would represent to others.

  ‘This be Edward Thwaites,’ she said, pointing to two of the magic words. ‘And what be that next to his name? Why, it be figures, Graymalkin – figures which be burned on his soul like the devil’s brand.’

  A noise came from the distance. At first it sounded as if the thunder – much weakened by its previous rage – was about to return. Then Meg began to distinguish the individual parts of the noise, and realized that it was no more than the angry mutterings of the men.

  ‘So brave. So very brave!’ she crooned softly. ‘But how far will such bravery take them? Will it stay with them as they cross the Green? Or will it, like water in a leaky pail, drain a little more away with every step they take, so that by the time they reach my door, they will be nothing be empt
y vessels? We know the answer, do we not, Graymalkin?’

  There was a hammering on the door.

  As if they thought that she was so afraid of them that she would bolt it to keep them out!

  As if they thought they were the ones with the power!

  ‘Hast thee lost so much of thy spirit that thee needs to knock on thy own door, Harold Dimdyke?’ Meg called out contemptuously.

  There was a pause, then the latch was lifted and the door swung open. And suddenly the tiny kitchen was full of desperate worried men – men who, even now, were marvelling at their own resolution.

  One man stepped clear of the pack. Harold Dimdyke. So nervous that he was twisting the rim of his hat – which he had instinctively removed – in his hands.

  ‘This was a storm the like of which we have never seen before,’ he said, almost stumbling over his words.

  ‘It was longer than most,’ Meg replied indifferently.

  ‘It was a sign,’ muttered one of the other men – Jack Peters, the blacksmith.

  ‘A sign of what?’ Meg asked.

  ‘A sign that evil is afoot.’

  Meg threw back her head, and laughed. ‘Evil!’ she repeated. ‘If it is a sign of anything, it is a sign that the men of this village are so frightened that they will jump at their own shadows.’

  ‘Milk has turned sour,’ said a third man.

  ‘Milk has always turned sour during a thunder storm,’ Meg countered.

  ‘A calf, born at the very height of the storm, had two heads,’ claimed a fourth man.

  And then a torrent of words – of accusations – was unleashed.

  ‘Maddy Brookes has a fever!’

  ‘Jethro Sykes has lost the sight in one eye!’

  ‘A wild dog the size of the lion that was killed by Samson in the Bible has been seen stalking the village!’

  ‘But even that is not the worst,’ Harold Dimdyke said gravely.

  ‘Then tell me what is,’ Meg responded – still calm, still amused.

  ‘The porch of the church was destroyed by the storm. The house of God has fallen to the forces of darkness.’

  So that was where the stone pillar she had seen the men carrying earlier had come from, Meg thought. She might have known. It had lain there – felled by the storm – and they had simply taken it, like the scavengers they were.

  ‘So many signs!’ Meg said. ‘So many portents!’ She swept her hand through the air, as if to brush away all the ignorance and superstition which had flooded into the room. ‘You bring me no more than tales to frighten children with! Is that not so, my little Graymalkin?’

  But, looking down, she saw that the cat, without her even noticing it, had somehow disappeared.

  ‘We must take our fate in our own hands,’ Harold Dimdyke said, his voice steadier now.

  ‘And how wilt thee do that?’ Meg wondered.

  ‘We must burn the witch!’ said a voice at the back of the small mob.

  And everyone else agreed – ‘Yes! Yes! We must burn the witch! Burn her! Burn her!’

  And now, for the first time, Meg began to feel a little of her confidence ebb away. ‘I am no witch,’ she said.

  ‘Then why dost thou have thy books, full of spells and incantations?’ asked the blacksmith.

  ‘Thou knowest it is no book of spells, Jack Peters,’ Meg said sharply. ‘Thou knowest exactly what it contains. For thou art in it!’

  ‘How can I know?’ Peters countered. ‘For I am a poor man – a simple, honest man – and I cannot read.’

  ‘Then ask Roger Tollance,’ Meg suggested. ‘For is it not he who made the marks? Is he not he who kept the records?’

  She had expected them all to be answered by that. She had never expected – never would even have dreamed – that the mob would part, and Roger Tollance would advance to the centre of the room.

  He stopped, not more than a foot from her, and her nostrils were filled with the stink of cheap ale and his bodily functions. She looked him up and down with the same contempt she had always shown him. He was a man who might have achieved much – a scholar by local standards – but now she owned his talents, buying them as cheaply as she could have bought the services of the lowest swineherd.

  ‘Tell them of my books, Roger Tollance,’ she said. ‘Tell them what my books contain.’

  He would not look her in the eye. Instead he turned to face the men from whose ranks he had so recently been drawn. ‘They are the words of the Devil,’ he said in a frightened voice. ‘The Devil’s own words, writ in his own hand.’

  ‘Then thou art the Devil himself, for it was thy hands which wrote it,’ Meg told him.

  Roger Tollance swallowed hard, and shook his head violently. ‘Not I,’ he said.

  ‘How can thee say that when they have all seen thee do it?’ Meg asked scornfully. ‘When they have all stood in this same room and watched thee scratch with thy quill?’

  ‘If my hand did make the marks, it was through no choice of my own,’ Roger Tollance protested. ‘It was the Devil’s will which was guiding me. But I am free of him now.’

  ‘Thee liest!’ Meg protested.

  But then Harold Dimdyke lifted his hand to silence her. ‘We have heard enough,’ he said solemnly.

  One

  The hammering on the front door of the police house seemed like nothing more than a bad dream at first, and Constable Michael Thwaites – who had soon convinced himself that a bad dream was exactly what it was – turned over in his bed and hoped it would soon go away.

  But it did not go away. Rather it grew ever louder and more demanding, until even a portly middle-aged police constable who valued his beauty sleep could no longer ignore it.

  Thwaites rolled carefully out of bed. As his feet made contact with the cold linoleum, he promised himself – for perhaps the hundredth time – that sometime next week he’d get around to laying that roll of carpet which, for well over a year, had been propped up reprovingly in the corner of the bedroom.

  The knocking continued – almost demented both in its force and rapidity by now.

  Thwaites reached for his tartan dressing gown, which was hanging on a hook next to the bed. Now if he could only find his slippers ...

  The man at the door seemed intent on waking up the whole village. Thwaites abandoned the search for his footwear with a deep sigh, and made his way carefully down the stairs.

  He knew his visitor. Indeed, in a village the size of Hallerton, it would have been a miracle if he hadn’t.

  ‘Now what’s all this about, young Kenneth?’ Thwaites asked sternly.

  Kenneth Dugdale, who was the local milkman and couldn’t have been called ‘young’ for at least a couple of decades, gestured wildly with his hands.

  ‘Murder!’ he gasped. ‘Out on the Green!’

  ‘Murder!’ Thwaites repeated, wondering if this were all no more than a dream after all.

  ‘Tied to the Witching Post!’ Dugdale said. He placed his hands loosely around his own neck and stuck out his tongue for a moment. ‘Strangled!’

  Thwaites was suddenly more than aware of his own inadequacy. He was a local bobby, he told himself. He handled petty theft – not that there was much – and the failure to buy dog licences. He wasn’t equipped to deal with this.

  But there was someone who was equipped, he thought, as a sudden wave of relief washed over him!

  ‘Have you told the Witch Maker?’ he asked the milkman.

  Dugdale opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He tried again, with the same result.

  ‘Have you told the Witch Maker?’ Thwaites repeated.

  Dugdale shook his head.

  ‘No?’ Thwaites said angrily. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it is the Witch Maker,’ Dugdale said, forcing the words out with almost superhuman effort.

  The remnants of the morning mist were still swirling around the blackened stone Witching Post as Thwaites approached the Green. But even with the mist – and even from a distance – it was clear
that the milkman had been right. A man was hanging limply from the post, and that man was none other than the Witch Maker.

  ‘What are you goin’ to do?’ asked Dugdale, who, much against his will, had been dragged back to the scene of the crime.

  What was he going to do? the constable wondered.

  He knew what most rural bobbies would do. They’d seize on this murder as an opportunity to get themselves noticed by the brass in Whitebridge. But he didn’t want to be noticed. Like everybody else in the village, all he wanted was for the outside world to leave him alone.

  ‘Should I ... should I go an’ ask his brother, Tom, to come an’ deal with it?’ Dugdale asked desperately.

  Constable Thwaites was tempted – very tempted – to say yes, they should let Tom take charge.

  Because though the man had no official position of any kind, some of the Witch Maker’s authority had rubbed off on him – as the Witch Maker’s authority always rubbed off on members of his immediate family.

  But that wouldn’t work!

  It simply wouldn’t work!

  He was sure of that, because once before the village had tried to keep a violent death to itself – and had paid a heavy price for it!

  ‘You watch the body for a few minutes, will you?’ the constable asked the milkman.

  ‘An’ what will you be doin’ while I’m standin’ here?’ Dugdale wondered worriedly. Then he saw that Thwaites was looking across the Green at the bright-red phone box, and his worry became a complete panic. ‘You’re never goin’ to ...’ he gasped. ‘You’re surely not thinkin’ of ...?’

  ‘I don’t like it any more than you do, but I don’t have a lot of bloody choice, do I?’ Thwaites snapped.

  Before his resolution could fail him, the constable turned and strode rapidly towards the phone box.

  Did it still work? he fretted as he closed the gap between himself and his salvation.

  Say it had broken down – at some point in the ten years since it had been installed – would anybody have noticed? No one he knew had ever used it. Why should they, when all the people they could ever wish to talk to were no more than a short walk away?

  He pushed the door, but the box wouldn’t open. He tried again – and then a third time – before he realized that what he should have been doing was pulling, not pushing.