In the Night Wood. Dale Bailey
into the hand of a gruff man who barely acknowledged him, his eyes fixed on the television behind the counter.
Outside, in the bloodless English sunlight, Charles turned his attention to the paper:
The search continued for a missing six-year-old Tuesday near Yarrow. Mary Babbing was last seen riding her bicycle in front of her family home toward dusk last Sunday. Investigators —
Too much. Charles moved to discard the paper. He could not do so. Lissa stared up at him from the front page in lurid color. He folded it instead, tucked it under his arm, composed himself, blinking back tears.
Okay, then.
Mould’s hardware was next door.
Charles took a deep breath, pushed his way inside. The narrow space beyond felt claustrophobic, though the store wasn’t crowded. A single customer, lean, with a hank of dark hair hanging over his forehead, studied the packets of seeds on a wire rack. Charles nodded as he slipped past to the counter at the back of the store.
A tall, fleshy man stood there, wiping his hands on his apron.
“Ah, the stranger among us,” he said in a thickly accented voice. But Charles was the one with the accent here, wasn’t he — the stranger, as Mould (was he Mould?) had pointed out, in a strange land. Mould or not, the man was old, seventyish and hale, bald but for the unruly wisps of gray that clung to the sides of his head, thin of lip, bulbous of nose, tufted of eyebrow and ear. Eyes of pale, penetrating blue peered at Charles over half-rim glasses. Charles wasn’t sure he liked the eyes. They seemed to see more than they had any right to see. The old man extended his hand. It was callused, the thick, ridged nails clogged with crescents of grease. He was Mould after all, Trevor Mould. He said the name as they shook hands, and Charles winced, not at the name but at the fact that he seemed to have inserted his hand into a vise.
“Charles Hayden,” he said.
“No doubt. We’re glad to have you here.”
“True enough,” the seed-packet man said, joining them at the counter. He introduced himself as Edward Hargreaves, adding, “Hollow House hasn’t had anyone to warm its bones for near two years now. Longer if you think of how Mr. Hollow grew toward the end.”
“Wouldn’t leave the house,” Mould said. “I hadn’t seen him for years by the time he finally passed.” He reached out a hand. “Let’s have a look at that, shall we?”
Charles passed the photo across the counter.
“So beautiful at that age, aren’t they? Six, I’m guessing.”
“Five. Five and a half, she would have said,” Charles said, his neck burning.
Mould tilted his head. “Left her at home, did you?”
“Back in the States.” Not a lie, he told himself, but — something else. He couldn’t say exactly what. An omission, nothing more. Yet a lie by any other name —
He hesitated.
The truth would come out sooner or later. Given the amount of research it had taken to track Erin down to inform her of the inheritance, Merrow almost certainly knew. And now Colbeck knew. How long before all of Yarrow did as well?
He spoke without conscious volition. “She —”
“What’s that?”
Mould had turned to the rear counter to study the photograph.
“Nothing,” Charles said. “She couldn’t make the trip,” he said, for to speak it aloud was to acknowledge it as a true thing — to acknowledge his role in it. He swallowed.
“What happened to the glass?”
“My wife. She dropped it. She took a spill on the stile.”
“She’s all right, I hope?”
“Twisted her ankle. She’ll be on her feet again before the week’s out.”
Hargreaves shook his head. “Funny thing that, isn’t it? That wall.”
“Both walls,” Mould said. “Must have been a hell of a lot of work. Hard to say whether the intent was to keep something in or something out.”
“They say,” Hargreaves added, “that old Mr. Hollow kept the place closed up in the last years of his life. Wouldn’t so much as permit an open curtain.”
A chill passed through Charles. There was something haunting about the idea of the old man thrice imprisoned, inside the house, inside the great encircling walls.
“We can fix this up for you,” Mould said. “Later this afternoon, say? Joey, the one that does the glass cutting, he’s down to the King for lunch. He’ll be back in half an hour or so, and I can put him right on it. Say an hour. I hate to make you drive all the way back here.”
“That’s fine. I wanted to look in at the historical society.”
“Quiet village, Yarrow,” Hargreaves said. “I warrant you won’t find much there.”
“I’m interested in Caedmon Hollow.”
Hargreaves grimaced. “Not fit for children, that book.”
“Leave the man be, Ed.” Mould looked up. “If you tire of the historical society, you can always stop in at the King for a pint, can’t you? Anyway, we’ll have it ready for you.” He held out his hand as though he were finalizing some complex financial agreement, and once again, reluctantly, Charles inserted his hand into the vise.
“An hour, then,” he said.
Charles didn’t know what he’d expected from the historical society: brochures advertising local attractions, maybe? Recessed lighting illuminating framed photos and polished glass display cases?
But no. The society was very much a work in progress. The foyer was gloomy and close. It smelled musty. The rooms beyond — the two Charles could see, branching off a broad hallway with a stairway to the right — were largely barren of any such displays. Framed photographs listed on their hangers. A handful of dusty exhibit cases stood half obscured by stacks of cardboard boxes.
“Hello?” someone called from the interior.
“Hello.”
A door opened and closed. In the shadows at the end of the hall, a figure appeared — angular and tall, female, beyond that he couldn’t say. The woman wiped her forehead with a cloth.
“Just here for a look about, are you?”
“I thought it might be interesting.”
“Ah. So you’re the American who’s moved into Hollow House.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re the talk of the town.”
He peered closer. “We are, are we?”
“Down to the King, you are,” she said. Then: “Feel free to have a look. We don’t have much, I’m afraid.”
“It looks to me like you have quite a lot,” he couldn’t help saying.
“A lot of rubbish. That’s what I’m here for, to excavate it all and figure out what’s worth keeping.”
“I thought you were the docent.”
“That, too. Listen, give me a minute to finish up. I’m sorting papers in the back here. Papers, papers everywhere and nary a drop to drink.”
Suddenly