It was a persuasive speech, but it had no effect. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said, her head moving almost imperceptibly from side to side.
George noisily pushed his chair back, the legs shrieking on the stone-flagged floor. ‘I haven’t the time to waste here,’ he said. ‘If you don’t care about Peter Crowther or about finding Alison, I’ll go to someone who will. I’m sure Mrs Hawkin will tell us anything we want to know. After all, he’s her brother.’
Ma Lomas’s head came up as if someone had yanked at the hair on the back of her head. Her eyes widened. ‘Not Ruth. No, you mustn’t. Not Ruth.’
‘Why not?’ George demanded, letting some of his anger out. ‘She wants Alison found, she doesn’t want us to waste our time on false leads. She’ll tell us anything we want to know, believe me.’
She glared at him, her witch’s face malevolent as a Halloween mask. ‘Sit down,’ she hissed. It was a command, not an invitation. George retreated to his chair. Ma Lomas stood up and moved unsteadily across to the sideboard. She opened the door and took out a bottle whose label claimed it contained whisky. The contents, however, were colourless as gin. She filled a sherry glass with the liquid and drank it down in one. She gave two sharp coughs, her shoulders heaving, then she turned back to them, her eyes watering. ‘Peter were always a problem,’ she said slowly.
‘He always had a dirty mind,’ she continued, making her way back to her chair. ‘Nasty. Mucky. You’d find him out in the fields, staring at any animals that were coupling. The older he got, the worse he got. He’d follow anybody that was courting, his own kith and kin, desperate to see what they were doing. You’d know when the ram were serving the ewes because you’d walk into the wood and find Peter standing with his…’ She paused, pursed her lips, then continued. ‘His thing in his hand, eyes on stalks, watching the beasts at their business. He’d been slapped and shouted at, kicked and called for it, but it made no difference to him. After a time, it didn’t seem to matter so much. In a place like Scardale, you have to endure what you can’t cure.’
She stared into the fire and sighed. ‘Then young Ruth started to change from a little girl into a young woman. Peter was like a man obsessed. He followed her around like a dog sniffing after a bitch in heat. Dan caught him a couple of times up a ladder outside the lass’s bedroom, watching her through a crack in the curtains. We all tried to make him see sense – she was his own sister, it couldn’t go on. But Peter would never take a telling. In the end, Dan made him move out of the house and sleep over here in my cottage.’
Ma Lomas paused and briefly rubbed her closed eyelids. Neither George nor Clough moved a muscle, determined not to break the momentum of the story. ‘One night, Dan came back from Longnor. He’d been having a drink. This was during the war, when we were supposed to keep a blackout. As soon as he turned into the dale, he could see a chink of light shining out like a beacon from the village. He pedalled as fast as he could, wanting to tell whoever it was that they had a light showing before the bobby saw it and fined them. He was a good half-mile away when he realized it must be coming from his own home. Then he really stepped on it. Soon, he recognized the very window – Ruth’s bedroom. He knew their Diane was alone with Ruth, and he was convinced something terrible had happened to one or other of them.’ She turned to face her spellbound audience.
‘Well, he was wrong, and he was right. He came roaring and rushing into the house like a hurricane, up the stairs two at a time, near on hitting his head on the beams. He flung open the door to Ruth’s room and there was Peter standing by Ruth’s bed, his pants round his ankles, the lantern casting a shadow on the ceiling that made his cock look like a broomstick. The lass had been fast asleep, but Dan bursting in like a madman woke her up. She must have thought she was having a nightmare.’ The old woman shook her head. ’I could hear her screaming right across the village green.
‘The next thing I heard was Peter screaming. It took three men to drag Dan off him. I thought he was a dead man, covered in blood like a calf that’s had a hard birth. We locked him in a lambing shed until his body had started to heal, then Squire Castleton arranged for him to go into the hostel in Buxton. Dan told him if he ever came near Ruth or Scardale again, he’d kill him with his bare hands. Peter believed him then and he believes him now. I know you’ll be thinking that what I’ve told you means he could have seen Ruth in Alison and done something terrible to her. But you’re wrong. It means the very opposite. If you want to make Peter Crowther crawl across the floor begging for mercy, just go and tell him Ruth and Dan are looking for him. The last place he’d ever come is Scardale. The last person he’d come near is anybody connected to Scardale. Take my word for it, I know.’
She sat back in her chair, her narrative over. The oral tradition would never die as long as Ma Lomas lived, George thought. She epitomized the village elder who holds the tribal history, its integrity protected only by her personal skills. He’d never expected to encounter one of those in 1963 in Derbyshire. ‘Thank you for telling us, Mrs Lomas,’ he said formally. ‘You’ve been very helpful. One more thing before we leave you in peace. Charlie said he’d seen Mr Hawkin in the field between the wood and the copse on Wednesday afternoon. He told us you were retracing his steps just now. Did you also see the squire on Wednesday, then?’
She gave him a calculating look, her eye as bright as a parrot’s. ‘Not after Alison disappeared, no.’
‘But before?’
She nodded. ‘I’d been having a cup of tea with our Diane. When I came out, Kathy were just getting into the Land Rover to go up to the lane end to pick up Alison and Janet and Derek from off the school bus. I saw David and Brian over by the milking parlour, bringing the cows in. And I saw Squire Hawkin crossing the field.’
‘Why didn’t you mention this?’ George asked, exasperated.
‘Why would I? There was nothing out of the ordinary in it. It’s his field, why wouldn’t he be walking it? He’s always out and about, snapping away with his camera when you least expect it. Besides, like I said, Alison wasn’t even home from school by then. He’d have had to be a bloody slow walker to still be in the field when she came out with Shep. And this weather, nobody walks slow in Scardale,’ she added decisively, as if settling an argument.
George closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. When he opened them again, he could have sworn a smile was twitching the corners of the old woman’s mouth. ‘I’ll have all this typed up into a statement,’ he said. ‘I expect you to sign it.’
‘If it’s truthful, you’ll get no argument from me. You going to let Peter go now?’
George got up and deliberately tucked his chair back under the table. ‘We’ll be taking what you’ve told us into consideration when we make our decision.’
‘He’s not a violent man, Inspector,’ she said. ‘Even supposing he had seen Alison, even supposing she’d reminded him of Ruth, all she’d have had to do was push him away. He’s a cowardly man. Don’t waste your time on Peter and let a guilty man go free.’
‘You seem to have made your mind up that whatever’s happened to Alison, somebody made it happen,’ Clough said, standing up, but making a point of keeping his notebook open.
Her face seemed to close in on itself, eyes narrowing, mouth pursing, nose wrinkling. ‘What I think and what you know are very different things. See if you can get them a bit closer together, Sergeant Clough. Then we’ll maybe all know what happened to our lass.’ She glanced up at the clock. ‘I thought you said you were going to talk to Squire Hawkin?’
‘We are,’ George said.
‘Better