The Haunt by A. L. Barker Read Free Book Online

myself. Police Constable Winslow of the local force. Acting on information received, I have some questions to put to Mrs Hartop.’
    She said, ‘What information?’
    ‘An unconfirmed report of a man seen carrying what appeared to be a dead child,’ He opened his notebook. ‘Can you throw any light on that?’
    ‘My child is not dead. Why come asking me questions?’
    ‘The man was seen approaching this house.’ PC Winslow leaned on the words.
    ‘You see?’ She turned to Owen. ‘You see how the people here have taken against us?’
    ‘The information came from a lady staying at the Bellechasse Hotel. She describes the man as elderly, tall, thickset, shabbily dressed, with glaring eyes.’ Owen smiled. ‘She was greatly distressed, she said the child looked as if it had been drowned.’
    They heard a door-handle rattle violently and a long-drawn wail. The constable said, ‘Somewhere a child is crying.’
    ‘My son James in his room.’
    ‘If you have no objection I’d like to see him.’
    ‘My objection is that he’ll think he can always get his own way if he makes enough fuss.’
    She crossed the hall and the wailing ceased at the sound of a key in the lock. Next moment James flung himself at Owen and hugged his knees.
    PC Winslow asked, ‘Why was he locked in?’
    ‘I wished to talk to Mr Grierson.’
    Couldn’t she see how that would be represented? thought Owen. The policeman certainly could. He sank to his heels and turned James to face him. ‘Now, young man, what’s up?’
    ‘Hoo,’ said James.
    ‘You, I’m talking to you, laddie.’
    ‘Hoo.’ James made a funnel of his hands and shouted through it. ‘Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!’
    PC Winslow rose to his full height. ‘Is he mentally retarded?’
    ‘Look,’ Owen said, ‘we’d had a slight mishap, that’s all. He slipped in the mud and lost his shoes. I was carrying him home.’
    James spluttered with laughter. ‘I drowned!’
    *
    Elissa was disposed to make light of Owen’s apprehension. ‘Darling, you’re old enough to be her father.’
    ‘That makes it the more titillating,’ Owen said grimly.
    He avoided the garden, but was conscious of James’s presence. The boy must have been warned not to intrude: he put his head and shoulders through the gap in the fence and hung there, watching. It put Owen in mind of someone in the stocks.
    When James had gone to bed he went out and closed the gap with a plank driven into the ground and lashed to the end posts. He felt mean doing it, and something else – a generalised discontent; throwback, he supposed, to his misgivings about the wisdom of coming here to live.
    ‘You do realise,’ he said to Elissa, ‘that any malicious tittle-tattle about Mrs Hartop and me would rub off on you?’
    ‘I’ve never been part of an eternal triangle: it would be quite an achievement at my age. But of course the achievement would be yours, wouldn’t it?’
    He left it there. Smarting, drove to a pub called the Dolly Pentreath. A pint of real ale restored him to what Horace would call an equable mind.
    People were discussing how and why the pub had got its name. Someone said Dolly Pentreath was the last person to speak the old Cornish, someone else said she had been a wrecker’s moll who helped lure sailors to their death. They rather thought she might have died of gin here in the bar. No one was really bothered.
    *
    Angela Hartop had just turned into their lane, walking from the bus stop, pulling a loaded shopping trolley and carrying a parcel under the other arm. There was no way he could have driven past and left her.
    She was unsurprised when he pulled up beside her and waited while he put her luggage in the boot. She looked hot and tired, the faint down on her upper lip was moist, the tender skin under her eyes looked bruised.
    Owen noted the details without any idea what he was going to make of them. ‘I’d have offered you a lift if I’d known you were going into town.’
    ‘You’re very