Crybbe (AKA Curfew) by Unknown Page B

they'd had enough.'
        'What? The townsfolk of Crybbe
actually rebelled? What did they do, write "Wort Must Go" on the
lavatory wall?'
        'Probably, for the first ten
years of atrocities. But in the end they really did come out to lynch him, all
gathered out there in the courtyard, threatening to burn the place down with
him in it if he didn't come out.'
        'And did he?'
        'No,' said Rachel. 'He went into
the attic and hanged himself from the same rafters from which he'd hanged his offenders.'
        'And naturally,' Fay said, 'he
haunts the place.'
        'Well, no,' Rachel said.
"He doesn't, actually. No stories to that effect anyway. And when Mr
Kettle toured the house, he said it was completely dead. As in vacant. Un-presenced,
or however you care to put it. Max was terribly disappointed. He had to console
himself with the thought of the hound bounding across his path one night.'
        'What?'
        'Black Michael's Hound. Nobody
ever sees Michael, but there is a legend about his dog. A big, black,
Baskerville-type creature said to haunt the lanes on the edge of town. It comes
down from the Tump.'
        Fay thought at once of the old
lady who kept telephoning her, Mrs Seagrove. 'I didn't know about that.'
        Rachel looked at her, as if
surprised anybody should want to know about it.
        'When was it last seen?' Fay
asked.
        'Who knows. The book Max found
the story in was published, I think, in the fifties. One of those "Legends
of the Border" collections. The more recent ones don't seem to have bothered
with it.'
        Fay wondered if it would help
Mrs Seagrove to know about the legend. Probably scare her even more. Or maybe
Mrs Seagrove did know about it and had
either invented or imagined her own sighting, which would explain everything.
The problem with old ladies was you could never be quite sure of their state of
mind, especially the ones who lived alone.
        She asked bravely, 'Are we
going up to the attic, then?'
        'Certainly not,' Rachel said
firmly. 'For one thing, it's not terribly safe. The floor's pretty badly rotted
away up there and Max isn't insured against people breaking their necks. Unless
they've been hanged.'
        Fay shivered and smiled and
looked around. 'Well,' she said. It could be wonderful, I suppose. If it was
done up.'
        'With a million pounds or so
spent on it, perhaps.' Rachel prodded with a shoe and sent a piece of plaster
skating across
the dusty wooden floor, 'I can think of better things you could do with a
million pounds.'
        'Has it been like this since -
you know - Tudor times?'
        'Good God, no. At various times
... I mean, in the past century alone, it's been a private school, a hotel . .
. even an actual dwelling place again. If we had a torch you'd see bits of wiring
and the ruins of bathrooms. But nothing's ever lasted long. It was built as an Elizabethan
house, and that, in essence, is what it keeps reverting to.'
        'And now?'
        'No big secret. Max is a New Age
billionaire with a Dream.'
    'You don't sound very impressed.'
        Rachel stood in the centre of
the room and spread her hands. 'Oh God ... He wants to be King Arthur. He wants
to set up his Round Table with all kinds of dowsers and geomancers and spiritual
healers and other ghastly cranks. He's been quietly infiltrating them into the town
over the past year. And there'll be some kind of Max Goff Foundation, on a
drip-feed from Epidemic, hopefully with the blessing of the Charity Commissioners.
And people will get ludicrous grants to go off an search for their own pet Holy
Grails.'
        'Sounds quite exciting,' said
Fay, but Rachel looked gloomy and rolled her eyes, her hands sunk deep into the
pockets of her Barbour.
        'Money down the drain,' she
said.
        'What's a ... a geomancer?'
        'It's some sort of spiritual
chartered surveyor. Someone who works out where it's best to live to stay in
harmony with the