Authors: Kaye C. Hill
“Hiding, I think. How was Clopwolde?”
“Uneventful.” If you don’t count being attacked by a raving lunatic with a long-handled wrench.
“Anything good in the post?”
“What?” Oh – yes, the post. “No. No premium bonds or exotic job offers.”
“You know, I never asked you.” Steve squinted in the sun as he looked up at her. “What exactly do you do?”
Lexy thought. “I’m a house-sitter.”
He smiled. “I should have guessed, really.”
“I look after people’s pets while they’re away.”
“I know the kind of thing. Amazing what people will pay to have Fido looked after in the comfort of his own home, isn’t it?”
Is it? Lexy made a mental note to look into that.
“Speaking of which,” he continued, “where’s Kinky?”
Lexy looked round automatically before she spoke. “He’s... with friends.”
“Oh?”
“This couple I know. Love him to bits. Sometimes I leave him there for a night or two. When I’ve got things to do.”
“Have you got things to do, then?” Steve attempted to brush oil from his face. He made it a whole lot worse.
“One or two.”
“Don’t give much away, do you?”
“That’s because I haven’t got much to give away. I do a bit of house-sitting and...” I investigate mysterious deaths. “... when I visit new clients, like I’m
doing tomorrow, I like to keep Kinky out of the way in case he tries to kill their pets. Doesn’t create a good impression first off.”
Steve laughed. “I got rid of that bone of his, by the way. Nice up there on the cliff, isn’t it?”
“Gorgeous. But I forgot to tell you that it’s private ground. Hope the Gallimores didn’t see you up there – they seem to be morbidly paranoid about their sheep. Not sure
what they think we’re going to do with them.”
“I didn’t even see any,” said Steve.
Lexy went into the cottage, and walked up the hall, sniffing the air. What was that smell. Oil paint? Coming from Elizabeth’s studio? For a mad moment she wondered if she was having some
kind of ghostly olfactory episode. She put her head around the door.
On the up side, there wasn’t a pale outline of Elizabeth Cassall daubing at the canvas.
But on the down side, there was a new painting sitting on the easel.
A painting of Old Shuck.
Lexy approached it disbelievingly. It was the shaggy black creature to perfection, running hell for leather, exactly as Lexy had seen it on three separate occasions. Who... ?
She heard the sound of crockery being stacked in the kitchen. Twisting away from the painting, she strode down the hall. It was Rowana.
“Did you do that painting in the studio?” Lexy asked, without preamble. She half-expected the girl to say ‘What painting?’, but Rowana nodded. “I was going to tell
you – it was really weird, but when I was looking out of the bedroom window earlier, I saw that dog, or whatever it was, running through the trees on Freshing Hill.”
Freshing Hill? It was getting closer.
“At least, I thought I saw it – it was there one moment, gone the next,” Rowana went on. “So I thought I’d paint it, while I still had an image in my mind. It was
probably a trick of the light or... what’s the matter?” She was looking at Lexy curiously. “Hang on a minute – it’s that dog you were talking to Tyman about in the
pub, isn’t it? Old Shuck? The ghost dog?”
“Maybe.” Lexy didn’t want to alarm her. “How big did you think it was?”
“’Bout as big as a wolfhound. Big shoulders. And shaggy, with a huge head, kind of facing down. Just like I painted it. It
is
the one you saw, isn’t it?”
Lexy nodded.
They stared at one another.
“Well, if we’ve both seen it,” said Rowana, slowly, “either that means we’ve both seen a ghost... or, whatever it is, it’s real.”
“Of course it’s real,” snorted Lexy. “It’s someone’s dog that’s got loose.”
Rowana arched her eyebrows. “Not everything can be explained,” she said.
Lexy went into the cool of the living room. Her green sleeping bag was slumped on the sofa like a large dead caterpillar, and yesterday’s clothes were strewn across the rug where
she’d left them. As she bent to pick them up, a sudden wave of exhaustion hit her. She’d only had a few hours’ sleep the night before, followed by all that malarkey up the hill at
dawn, to say nothing of the pleasure of getting reacquainted with Gerard. And now this with the damned black dog again. Added to which something was still lurking at the back of her mind. Something
someone had said. Was it Ward or Tyman? She’d have a think about it. She sat down on the sofa, kicked off her trainers and settled back.
The room was full of evening shadows when Lexy awoke. So much for thinking. She stretched, rubbing her eyes. She could hear voices in the kitchen – Gabrielle must have come back.
She padded over to the patio door and pushed it open, breathing in the perfume of the late summer garden.
She stepped outside in her socks, and crossed the patio on to the lawn.
A movement caught her eye. Lexy looked up just in time to see a dark shape disappearing up the sheep path. She drew in a sharp breath. Old Shuck again? How much closer was he going to come?
Well, this time she was going to confront the creature, even if she had to chase it all the way to Clopwolde and back. In her socks.
Lexy climbed over the garden wall, and walked quietly up the track into the wood, listening intently. The only sound was the liquid song of a blackbird.
She advanced a little further, then halted, standing dead still on the narrow gloomy path. In mid-verse the blackbird stopped short, issued a loud, harsh warning and swooped away.
The wood was smothered in silence.
Lexy looked around. Someone was watching her. She could feel it. She looked sharply into the thick undergrowth. God, where was Kinky when she needed him?
A twig snapped.
“Right. Who’s there?” The shake in her voice took all the authority out of the demand.
There was no reply, just that same silence, as if the whole wood had drawn in a deep breath.
Lexy was filled with a sudden, nameless panic. She flexed, silently counted to three, then whirled around and darted back down the path to the low grey stone garden wall. She vaulted over it and
collapsed on the lawn.
After a few seconds she sat up, shaking her head in quiet embarrassment. So, she was going to chase Old Shuck to Clopwolde and back, was she? Looked like she’d underestimated him,
then.
Rowana was leafing through a magazine in the living room when Lexy came back through the French window. She stared at Lexy’s red face, grass-stained jeans and dusty
socks.
“Did you fall over again?”
“Yup.”
“You were right about chihuahua walking being demanding.”
“I was on my own, actually. Kinky’s staying with some friends for a couple of nights.”
Steve was making his way across the lawn towards them, temporarily driving all thoughts of Old Shuck from Lexy’s mind.
“What’s for dinner?” he enquired, stripping off his overalls on the patio.
Lexy blew her spiky fringe off her forehead. “I could make us something,” she offered. “Soup and home made bread?”
“Sounds like a little piece of heaven. I’ll just be in the shower.”
Lexy shot a brief glance at him as he went past. If Rowana hadn’t been there she’d have reminded him to lock the door this time. In no uncertain terms.
She went through to the kitchen and began measuring out flour.
Lexy was outside gathering herbs when Steve came down, damp and clean, pulling on a t-shirt.
“Want any help?” he asked. “I can’t do the technical stuff, but I slice vegetables pretty well.”
“You could start on the spuds. They’re in a bag in the kitchen.”
“Right on to it, ma’am.”
“Where are you going with that?” Gabrielle had swept out of the spare bedroom and met Lexy on the landing carrying a tray of dough.
“Airing cupboard. I need to let it rise.”
“Oh, right. Can you come and look at something?”
“Sure.” Lexy balanced the dough tray on a pile of bed linen in the airing cupboard, then followed Gabrielle, wondering what on earth the girl might want her to see.
She had laid out a dress on the bed.
“This is nice.” Lexy dusted off her hands and picked it up. An emerald green satin cocktail number, beautifully sewn, with a subtle silver design at the neck, sleeves and hem.
“More than nice, it’s absolutely gorgeous.” She looked for the label. “Where did you get it?”
“I made it.”
Lexy regarded the girl in astonishment. “Where did you learn to do this?”
“Taught myself. I always liked doing it, ever since I was a kid.” She shrugged. “I’ve never really shown my stuff to anyone. I wasn’t sure if it was good
enough.”
“Well, I’m no expert, but if this dress is anything to go by, I think you’ve found your vocation here.”
Lexy left Gabrielle staring into space. She could almost hear the possibilities ticking over in her mind.
It might have been the effect of the meal, but everyone was yawning by ten o’clock that night, and by eleven all three Patersons had gone to bed.
Rowana had been the last to go up. She checked outside the patio door. “Oh, look – it’s nearly a full moon.”
Lexy stood outside, looking up at the constellations, trying to remember which was which. There was a time when she’d known the night sky like the back of her hand. When she was a kid,
living in the wilds.
Her head cocked to one side as she listened to the sounds coming from the dark woods surrounding the cottage. The soft hoot of a tawny owl. The yelp of a fox. The indefinable rustlings of mice
and voles. And something else. Lexy moved along the wall of the cottage. A figure, with a torch, quietly making its way up the path. One of the Gallimores? It was too dark to see. Whoever it was,
Lexy intended to find out. She might have screwed up with Old Shuck, but this would be different.
She rushed back into the cottage, grabbed a torch from the hall cupboard, and shrugged her jacket on. She stopped with a frown halfway through. Was that a car engine? This time of night?
She let herself out on to the patio again. It was half past eleven. The yellow, waxing moon hung in the sky, illuminating her path across the lawn. She climbed over the low wall and walked
quietly up the path, which was only just visible in the moonlight’s glow.
The inexplicable terror that Lexy had experienced earlier in the wood was forgotten in her desire to discover the identity of the night walker. There had been no doubting the reality of
that
figure.
Treading warily, she stopped every minute or two to listen. The stranger was still up ahead – Lexy could hear the rustle and crunch of leaves underfoot.
The moon, which had picked out the path ahead with silvery light, passed behind a cloud. Lexy slowed, waiting for her eyes to adjust to this new, velvety darkness. She didn’t want to use
the torch and lose her night vision.
It became harder going. Once or twice she found her feet tangled in the undergrowth as she wandered off the track.
She looked up, trying to see a patch of sky. Was the moon going to come out again? At what point had the trees started pressing in on either side of her?
She listened again. All was silent now, apart from the odd stirring in the undergrowth – the sound of small furry things going about their legitimate business. Sounds she’d heard
many times before. But she couldn’t hear her quarry any more.
Then Lexy heard a louder rustle coming towards her, and a heavy exhalation of breath. Sheep, perhaps, coming down into the wood to shelter for the night. Or a muntjac deer. Or...
She stumbled against something. She’d reached the same fallen tree Ward had pinned her against earlier. Meant she’d strayed off the path again. Nothing else for it. Lexy fumbled in
her pocket for her torch.
Then she froze.
Ward Gallimore’s voice had pierced the night.
“Get out of the way, Tyman!”
“No!” his brother yelled back. “Don’t shoot! Don’t... ”
But a shot rang out anyway, mind-blowingly loud. Lexy didn’t know if it was her reflexes that hurled her down by the fallen tree, or a bullet. Either way she was on her back in exactly the
same place as she had been much earlier that day. Except this time Ward Gallimore wasn’t lying on top of her.
He was trying to kill her.
He was striding straight towards Lexy, the gun barrel in his hand gleaming softly in the moonlight.
She tried to scramble up, clutching at the fallen tree, but her legs weren’t having any of it. Lexy braced herself. But instead of an explosion followed by nothingness, there was a heavy
thud and a shout of pain.
Ward had fallen, landing face down a few feet away from her. He twisted on the ground, clutching his ankle.
Lexy eyed the dark shape of the gun which had tumbled to the ground beside him.
Ward raised his head a few inches and looked over at her.
“Lexy,” he gasped. “You... all right?” He fell back with a groan.
Anger helped her to struggle to her feet this time. “You try to blow my frigging head off, and you’re asking me if I’m all right?” Her voice was several octaves higher
than usual. “Or were you just checking I was dead? Well, sorry to...”
She was interrupted by Tyman, who was running towards them, holding a torch with a powerful beam that almost blinded Lexy.
“You haven’t... ?”
“She’s all right.” Ward spoke through clenched teeth. “I missed her by a few inches.”
“Perhaps you should practise more.” Lexy advanced a few steps, her eyes searching for the gun on the woodland floor. “You two really have got some weird game going on,
haven’t you?” Then she found her legs buckling under her again.
Tyman grasped her arm. It was like some bizarre re-run of the charade that had taken place that morning. Except this time Tyman was playing Sir Galahad.
As he pulled her upright, Lexy felt blackness rushing to meet her. He put an arm out to steady her.
“Lean on me for a moment, get your balance.”
She didn’t want to, but Lexy found herself clinging tightly to his arm.