she thought you were too good a chance to miss, being a stranger who hadn’t a clue. And I suppose she took a chance on your being honest . . . well, she got what she wanted. Sepp’s valuables, without having to bribe somebody to clear Sepp’s house.’
‘But she could have walked down any time and collected Sepp’s things . . .’
The minister sighed, and was silent a long lime, watching the house martins feeding their young under the eaves of the nearby house, back and forth, back and forth.
At last he said reluctantly, ‘You’ll find this difficult to believe; but people have been terrified of that house. Any Cunning Man’s house. It used to be the same all over East Anglia. There’s a bit in a book by Richard Deacon, about a man who lived on the Suffolk border – Cunning Murrell was his name. There were all sorts of tales told about Cunning Murrell – he’s supposed to have lived to be well over a hundred. They say he could charm wild hares in the field – that they’d come and eat out of his hand. But the real point is that when he died, they could find no one who would clear out his house, for any amount of money. They had to wait months until they could persuade his son, Buck Murrell, to come and clear the house, and he came halfway across the country to do it. I suppose he must have been another Cunning Man . . .’
‘But what did they do, these Cunning Men, to make people so scared of them?’
The minister shrugged. ‘What the country people wanted them to do. A lot of it was harmless – charming warts – anyone can charm warts, I’ve done it myself. And herbal remedies – useful for poor people in the time before the NHS. Finding things that people had mislaid – telling them where to look for them . . .’ He trailed off again.
‘That sounds harmless enough,’ said Rose stoutly. ‘I don’t see what there is to be scared of in that.’
‘No,’ said the vicar. ‘But there were other things. Putting a blight on people’s crops . . . yes. I know it sounds ridiculous, but there was a lot of that until quite recently, especially round the time of village prize vegetable shows . . .’
‘God, how spiteful . . . and how childish!’
‘I’d believe anything of that Wallney lot. They’re just not part of the twentieth century. As they say here in Cley, one road into Wallney, and the same road out. And the inbreeding . . . they say there are only five faces in Wallney; the same faces recur time and again. Mind you, I think Cley folk have a down on Wallney. It’s sort of bottom of the heap.’
‘That doesn’t excuse them shooting at that cat . . .’
‘Cats? They do it to people, let alone cats. One of my young lads here was foolish enough to try to go courting a Wallney girl. A gang of Wallney youths set on him, half-killed him and chased him out of the village. Burnt his motorbike into the bargain. He took the hint – married a Cley girl.’
‘Didn’t the police . . .’
The minister shook his head sadly. ‘The policeman here knew he’d never get to the bottom of it. Wallney people stick together. They all tell the same story . . . there was nothing he could do.’
‘But why pick on a cat?’
‘Oh, they’d think nothing of killing a cat. Shove it in a bag and throw it in a pool – cat and kittens. Farmers aren’t sentimental.’
‘Yes, but to take the trouble to shoot it . . .’
He was silent an even longer time, watching the house martins and scuffing his little highly polished shoes on the car’s floor-covering. Then he said, ‘Sepp Yaxley had a cat – a striped cat. They said it disappeared the same time as he did. They might think, down Wallney, it was the same cat.’
‘After seven years?’
‘Cats live a lot longer than seven years. When they took against Sepp, they took against the cat. There was a lot of stupid talk.’ He stopped again, abruptly. But she had to know.
‘What kind of stupid talk?’
‘Oh, ridiculous stuff . . . medieval. They said the cat was Yaxley’s familiar spirit. A thing that took the form of a cat, to go about and wreak havoc. It’s unbelievable how stupid they can be.’ He tapped