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‘So you don’t remember seeing anything unusual recently, Mrs Waverley? Something or someone on the lane you thought was odd?’
Triona Bradley is doing her best to radiate calm, but the woman is fidgeting about the kitchen like a skittish colt. Picking things up, putting them down, running the tap for no apparent reason. Merely watching her is exhausting.
Bradley puts down her cup (Villeroy & Boch, she notes; #classy). ‘Mrs Waverley?’
The woman turns to face them. ‘The sitting room is at the back of the house,’ she says, as if this is some sort of new-fangledarrangement they’ll never have encountered before. ‘Overlooking the pool. And we keep ourselves to ourselves.’
‘No break-ins to your garden outbuildings in the recent past?’
She frowns. ‘No, of course not – we’d have reported it.’
‘What about the dog?’
The frown deepens. ‘Whataboutthe dog?’
Bradley smiles. ‘Well, I’m sure he needs a lot of walking and those woods must be ideal. Maybe you noticed something that you didn’t realize was significant at the time? Maybehedid –?’
‘I don’t go in the woods.’ Her tone is surprisingly categorical.
Bradley smiles again. ‘Really? I find that very surprising.’
The woman prickles a little. ‘It creeps me out, if you really want to know, that whole place. It’s bad enough it’s on all those websites, but at least there’s no plaque or anything or we’d be overrun with ghouls.’
Bradley is baffled. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not with you.Ghouls?’
The woman looks at her. ‘Are you not from round here?’
‘We’re based at Gloucester HQ, as we said. I live in Finstock. So I guess that’s a no.’
‘So you don’t know?’
‘Don’t know what?’
‘About the Crone Oak.’
‘The Crone Oak? I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Really? I find that very surprising.’
The woman gives Bradley an arch look; evidently she feels the balance of power has shifted.
Bradley smiles. ‘Well, perhaps you could relieve our deplorable ignorance. If you would be so good.’
The woman purses her lips. ‘It was years ago, the fifties sometime, a couple of kids found a skeleton. They were climbing trees and chose the wrong one.’
Bradley frowns. ‘You mean it wasinsidethe tree?’
She nods. ‘In a hole in that creepy old thing – the one that looks like an Ent.’
Bradley, for one, wasn’t expecting a Tolkien reference, but she knows which tree Waverley means, and she’s right, it does look eerily animate, as if it might start moving at any moment.
‘They said afterwards the bones must have been in there for hundreds of years – the branches had grown right through the ribcage. The boys were totally freaked out.’
‘I can well imagine,’ says Bradley drily.
‘You know, I think I’ve heard about that,’ says Holloway suddenly, surprising them both. ‘Just didn’t realize it was here. They thought she was some sort of witch, right? Shoved her down the tree and tied her up so she starved to death?’
The woman turns to look at him. ‘Exactly. They put her in a brank’s bridle.’