‘It’s very wrong of me to bother you with all this,’ she wrote, bringing the long letter to its end. ‘I’ve had three chances, lately, to say what I suspected, but each time I was talking to a man, so perhaps I didn’t have enough confidence. I did mention the wax image once – to a nice man named Mr Freeman, in Selbury – and he saw nothing sinister about it, but of course I hadn’t described it as I have done to you. Please, Rose, don’t worry. I’m all right. I really need somebody to tell me that I’m silly and fanciful and should take myself in hand, or that I am right and should go ahead without hesitation.’

She stared at the last words and asked herself, Go ahead with what? Witchcraft was no longer a crime; the laws against it had been repealed long ago. Go ahead with the rescue of Ethel; that was the answer. Out of it all, all the mystery and uncertainty, only one thing really mattered – Ethel’s well-being.

11

ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JUNE, WHICH WAS A Wednesday, Berta Creek, for the first time, was late. Ordinarily she brought Miss Mayfield a tray of tea at twenty minutes to eight, and her punctuality had been unfailing.

On this morning Miss Mayfield suspected, not Berta, but the accuracy of her bedside clock, checked it by her wrist watch, and at ten minutes to eight, thinking that something must have happened to Berta, rose with the intention of making tea herself. Her morning tea was, she admitted to herself, more important than anything else she ate or drank in the course of the day. In Alchester, where she and Janet had to be stirring early because their flatlet was quite a long bus ride from the school, she had always made the tea by a quarter past seven. It was therefore with no sense of grievance that she rose and pulled on her dressing gown and stepped out on to the landing, just in time to meet Berta coming upstairs with the tray in her hand.

Berta said, without preliminary:

‘Oh, Miss; something dreadful’s happened. Wesley Baines. He drowned hisself last night.’

Berta Creek, in her eagerly sought-after account later on, said that Miss Mayfield fell against the banister rail of the landing. And that was true. Feeling her face turn stiff and brittle, her knees weaken, Miss Mayfield clutched at the rail and said:

‘Oh no, Berta!’ And then, immediately, ‘How do you know?’

‘I come right by the gate. Ed Woodly and Frank Revatt was just taking him in on a gate; his body, I mean. Couldn’t walk by, could I? Had to stop and ask. Thass why I’m late.’

Miss Mayfield tottered into her bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. Berta placed the tray in its usual position.

‘To say he drowned himself is terrible. What makes them think that?’