The Mystery of the Stolen Brides

Book 1: Inspector Dearborn

by Robin Squire

Genres: Horror; Mystery; Paranormal

Synopsis

It is the summer of 1891 and a young, beautiful bride is snatched from her wedding, leaving her guests shocked and her new husband distraught. A search is hurriedly mounted, but as each minute passes the trail grows colder. In angry desperation they turn to Scotland Yard. In Victorian London, Detective Inspector Solomon Dearborn has been crumbling under the failures of the Jack the Ripper investigation. Reluctantly he and his young assistant, Detective Sergeant Sparrowhawk, turn their attention to the missing Somerset bride. The crux of this mystery, though, is that it has all happened before . . . From Fleet Street to the moors, Dearborn and Sparrowhawk endeavour to find the truth behind this dark and difficult crime.

Release date: August 15, 2014

Publisher: Sphere

Print pages: 224

Sample

‘You’s scared!’

‘No oi’m not …’

‘You is!’

Edwin Brooks did his best to look jaunty, but the solitary ruin of the farmhouse did put him in a funk. Already he was in trouble enough, having been mocked by Tommy Simmons into playing truant from school, walking miles into this beastly wilderness. They’d be for it tomorrow all right.

‘Reckon there’s spooks and crawly-creepies in there, then?’ his schoolmate jeered, scampering ahead and dancing his satchel round and round. Tommy’s strong eyes had seen the place from afar, and he’d led his friend for ages across the timeless space towards it. Now it resembled, to Edwin, a crouching creature of decay and death which harboured all the horrors a boy could think of.

‘’Course not.’ The gusty moors spread all around, redolent of ancient ghosts. In the middle distance squatted some great grass-topped mounds – burial barrows of Bronze-Age chieftains. Tommy pointed.

‘Know what’s in there? Dead men.’ He savoured the word. ‘Dead! At nights they come out and –’

‘Oh shut up, shut up do.’ Swooping seabirds screeched laughter as Edwin dragged himself closer to the house walls, seeing with a shiver how rotten the place was, with bits of slate hanging from its roof and weeds all over. Already he was exhausted, they’d been walking for hours. Cracked boards covered most of the windows. However would they get back? Edwin removed his spectacles to wipe them and the world became a comforting blur. His left heel throbbed with a fiery blister.

‘’Ere, look at this,’ called Tommy. He was standing on a fallen shutter overgrown with grass, shaking at metal bars set between the sill and lintel of a window. Rust showered on to his cuffs. The central bar had been broken at its base and levered back, while those either side had been bent outwards to make a way through. Edwin limped reluctantly forward, blinking and peering.

‘Stick your specs on, you ass.’

Edwin did so, and saw that the blank back of some furniture blocked the window. Rags of curtain riffled, curling and uncurling round the metal stems. The other shutter hung loose, threatening to fall. All he wanted to do was go home. But Tommy was already pushing at the obstruction with his stick-thin arms. ‘Lend a hand,’ he grunted impatiently. Edwin shook his head, stepping back. ‘I’ll tell your ma,’ warned Tommy.

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘You wait. I will!’

With extreme reluctance Edwin brought his superior weight and strength to bear on the obstacle. There was moss and fungus on the woodwork, revoltingly slimy on his hands. Edwin shuddered, a spasm of revulsion which caused the thing to rock. ‘Again…harder,’ shouted Tommy, and with a combined heave the thing tipped backwards with a sudden dreadful swoop and disappeared inside. Edwin’s heart raced as his friend scrambled up and vanished through the bars, then a gruesome face peeped out. ‘Boo!’ it shrieked. A hand came through to help him up, but he shrank away. ‘I’ll tell ’er, I will…’ the smaller boy insisted.

Somehow Edwin forced himself to follow. His mind seethed: he was entering the lair of the giant spider, diving forward into rope-thick nets of gossamer. At any moment there’d be a heavy hairy scuttling and the monster would seize him with devouring jaws. He was actually weeping as he plunged into fathomless gloom. His foot sank through the unseen back of the felled bookcase: a mossy maw ingesting him, and he screamed as he dragged the ankle clear.

‘Ssshhh.’

Edwin caught his breath, and peered about. The place smelled pretty foul. A ramshackle piano and ancient furniture loomed nearby, the carpet felt soggy and squashy. But the monster was not here. Perhaps it was elsewhere, waiting.

A squawk of hinges flung him round, Tommy had found the door. Edwin scuttled across to him, and together they moved through into a chill dank hallway. He groped and clung to his friend’s jacket as they crept into deeper dark.

Even Tommy had stopped talking now. Stairs shrank away up to their left. Tommy paused, then started up them. ‘No!’ hissed Edwin through castanet teeth, but was forced to follow. The first step squealed, the second groaned and the third growled as they crept on upwards. They came to a small half-landing where the stairs turned back to climb into further blackness, and here Tommy paused. Edwin could feel the other’s back and shoulders trembling. ‘You’s scared too,’ he managed, amazed.

‘Never!’ spat out Tommy, angry at his own fright, and jabbed an elbow at his clinging shadow. Then he swung with exaggerated boldness round the banister-post and started alone up the next flight. But his violent movement set up answering shudders through the rotting rails and Edwin gave a shriek as, with thumping vibrations from the darkness over their heads, a huge shape swooped down at them with clumsy reaching arms. Terror seared through the boys’ skulls. Edwin knew only that it was coming for him with legs of bristly hair. He did not stop to see, but crashed away, while a transfixed Tommy glimpsed hollowed plains of bone and teeth, as the thing plunged, bowling him back with its tumbling weight, before it crumpled to stillness at his feet in a stench of dust.

Tommy realised that his eyes were shut, that he could hear scrambling bumps and odd little whimpers as his friend stumbled away below. There was a crash, then silence extended itself. He dared to open his eyes. The heap of clothing had not moved. He kicked at it, and it crunched. He found that his eyes had adjusted fully to the dark, that he was no longer afraid. Gingerly, and heady with daring, he stepped across the obstruction and continued upwards. At the top of the stairs he could just descry the shadows of doors, all closed, but facing him from the end of the passage which ran to the left was one which stood ajar, so that a gash of lighter gloom fell upon the wall beside it. It almost seemed to him that the house itself complained of his intrusion, its rotting floorboards wheezing and groaning at his every tread as he approached. But all was sour, all was dead – and his mother had always told him the dead could do no harm.

He reached the door and paused again, staring at its handle which gleamed strangely amid the matt cloaking of neglect. Tentatively he pressed the wood with his shoulder, and the door shuddered open with a series of creaks.

He could see that the room had been a bedroom. Boards blotted out the windows, though light streamed in through hacked splits in the timber. He gaped about, seeing a smashed dressing-table propped upright, its splintered mirror thick with dust. An old photograph of a woman stood above the fireplace to the right, appearing to watch him through the broken glass of its frame. Across to the left, towards the window, stood a four-poster bed – and as he stared another shock set his heart slamming. He drew deep breaths, forcing down his instinctive fears: ‘The dead can do no harm’, and he crept closer, gazing in fascination at the thing which lay there.

But then he stopped, washed through with such horror as he’d never dreamed of. For a few terrifying seconds the boy could not move, then he stumbled backwards, the breath thumped from him. He felt his eyes swell and seem to squeeze from their sockets to dangle on icy cheeks, and he turned, a gagging in his throat, the room bouncing in his crazed vision. A wall shoved him hard in the chest, a carpet-edge moved to catch his foot. Then, somehow, he was racing back along the croaking corridor and down the stairway, blubbering with insupportable terror as he stumbled over the awful sprawling thing that waited yet below.

Blood was on his hands as he reached through ancient broken glass to haul himself frenziedly through the bars that led from Hell, and he was sobbing as more bright grass slammed up to drive the breath from him. Then he was sprinting on rubber legs across the vast moors, and though the house shrank and shrank at every tottering stride he knew with certain dread that the Thing he had seen would catch him if ever in his life he were to stop.

Havencombe pond spat sunlight. Insects droned in the dazzle and yells of playing children echoed over the daisy-dotted grass. Below the porch of the tiny church the villagers sprawled in Sunday best among the tombstones, women sheltering under warm umbrellas as they watched for the dead squire’s daughter to emerge just-married. The ancient church organ piped and wheezed – squeezing sentimental tears from some, arousing dark memories in others. A horse’s snort merged with the subdued chorus, wedding carriages restlessly creaked. It was hot, and a smell of sweat and leather was on the breeze.

On the far side of the Green all was deserted. No eye fell on the figure that emerged from concealment: tall and gaunt he was, unstooped as yet – though his hair and heavy moustache were grey, his face etched with suffering. The distant church, obscured by the ancient willow, was to him like the blurred etching of something once well-known, dreamlike beyond the pale-green cascade which poured, as then, into the glittering water.

He began to steal towards the remembered tree, pacing steadily, weirdly peering – aware in the jumbled depths of his mind that he must not be seen. The willow loomed, blotting out the church and its smear of people. His hand reached up to rub the scar high on his forehead – and a soft explosion rocked his brain, startling his heart faster, his feet into a run. The frond curtain parted and he was in the concealing shade, staring out again towards the church. Flickers of brightness rippled up into his mind, easing back the dead years until he was young again, in that same place, gasping with exhaustion – possessed by an all-consuming plea: ‘Don’t let it be…’

Little Cyril Gifford went shrieking after the bounding ball, elder sister’s cast-off frock flapping around his ankles as he ran – grubby-faced, chubby hands outreaching. Ma was by the church wagging jowls with the other mothers, his legs were piston-rods – an engine! – driving him with hiss and whistle towards the tree in the middle of the Green. The ball vanished into the trailing foliage and, with a whoop of a train entering a tunnel, he followed it into the gloom.

But here he stopped, with a shock that transformed him horribly back into an entity of tiny limbs and fearful eyes as he stared at vast alien shoes which guarded the ball. He began to shiver, for a giant towered above him. His gaze crept up the massive frame, the great dangling hands, the huge head in the greeny clouds of tree-top. The face, with its dragon-gashed head, tilted slowly down to look. The teeth of the giant, bared in a sneer, would tear and crunch, the eyes seemed not to see him, and yet consumed him – dead eyes: the giant had risen from his tomb. Cyril gulped, eyes watering as he fought for breath. Then he broke from the giant’s spell and stumbled out into sunlight, where the noise rose at last to his throat like the bursting of a steam-boiler.

But no one heard. At that moment the church organ, too, found new voice as bride and groom appeared in the glare of the porch. Lounging figures sprang, umbrellas battled forwards, dark suits and bright dresses streamed out through the doors to wash the couple with congratulations. Charlotte Lamentina Cobb, née Westerfield, long-estranged daughter of the village, was wed. Her hand clung to her husband’s like silk to leather, their eyes swam in each other’s. He was an outsider, as she had become – an American, indeed. Somewhere below a photographer was struggling, his camera a three-legged crouching thing. ‘If you please … ladies … gentlemen. Please.’ And the bride smiled, pretty-faced and periwinkle-eyed, looking up at her husband who stood like a rock at her side.

The photographer fussed about, top hat awry and whiskers limp, forming the wedding group into an artistic array of human statuary, then galloped back and ducked beneath the cloth. ‘Very still now, if you please.’ The sun blazed, contorting faces, fixing them forever in sepia to fade, transmogrified by time, to unreality. And Charlotte smiled again in the magic of the day.

Beneath the willow the man had stepped forward, rigidly staring. And all he could see was the bride as a clear vision burning through a mist: unchanged in that same terror of whiteness, the bouquet like an open wound at her breast. It seemed that she turned towards him, could see him, and the self-same smile that had once stopped his heart glowed again at him across the Green. And he stumbled heedlessly forward, the three syllables of her name sobbing out of him like a prayer.

‘And again, if you please.’ The tough face of Grenville Cobb had settled into crags and valleys, the squashed nose a lumpy ridge, his narrowed eyes like lakes on fire. Yet sensitivity sat on his brow, and a kindness in his look betrayed a man of gentleness within a frame of bruising power. One of his fists relaxed to take his bride’s hand again, as delicately as handling a blown egg. He had a sudden absurd desire to lick her nose as if she were a piece of exquisite confectionery. Boldly his arm slid around her waist, and she squirmed, eyes gleaming quickly up at him.

‘Very still, I beg you.’

On his bride’s far side Grenville could see her mother, old and frail and sadly addled in the head. How could such a creature have borne a childlike Charlotte, he had often wondered – and so late in life, too. ‘Mister Cobb, I implore you, sir. Still.’

Again the group stiffened. Poor Widow Westerfield, as she was known, peered obligingly again into the dazzle, seeing the photographer as a smudge afloat on a sea of hats. Somewhere a child was howling – was it her own? No, her Charlotte was grown now, and safely wed. She began to mutter thanks that the secret had been so well kept, that her daughter’s happiness was undefiled by bitter knowledge.

‘Sssh,’ hissed a cross voice beside her – her sister Grace, close as ever, like a wardress. Her gaze swam away to where their childhood willow hovered in the haze, and she blinked, clearing her aching sight. Then she cried out, for it seemed that an image of a man had been conjured up from out of the past to shimmer there against the distant streaming fronds. She lurched, blinking again, and the spectre dissolved into pale-green splinters. Again she cried out, pointing a frantic finger.

‘Emmy!’ chided Grace, angrily, following the direction of the finger, seeing only the empty Green, some wretched child a-blubbing, ducks skittering across the water by the willow.

‘I-I thought…

‘You thought! Don’t you be silly, now.’

‘When you’re quite ready, ladies,’ intoned the photographer with what he felt to be suitably heavy irony. And Emmaline Westerfield wiped her eyes, and tried to still her shivering. Grace was right, of course she was. There was nothing there. No one. How could there be?

The village hall, festooned with bunting for the occasion, was as uncomfortably crammed as Grace had known it would be. Fat, red-faced, hot in her voluminous dress and huge hat, she looked irritably around at the rough-hewn locals who munched and guzzled in mindless happiness, mixing in hearty unease with the smart guests from London. The celebrations overflowed out on long tables over the lawn, children were noisily, stickily, everywhere. She swallowed another draught of scrumpy cider, belched discreetly, and glared again at the unlikely twin sister beside her.

‘This is your fault, hussy,’ she hissed, Somerset dialect thick as cream. ‘Shamin’ ’tis. A Westerfield weddin’ drunk to in a common village hall. What would her father’ve said, I wonder? – he’ll be a-churnin’ in his grave up there.’

Her sister made no answer, but simply sat, as she had for the past hour or so, cocooned in maddening silence. Grace quivered, wanting to take hold of that scrawny neck and wring it, grind knuckles into the thin, pitiable face, blacken those meek, helpless eyes. ‘Look at the poor girly,’ she went on. ‘She’s a-noticin’ – ye’ll ruin ’er day yet. I listened too well to you, we should’ve held it at home, and proud about it.’ She moved her mouth close to Emmy’s ear, determined to extract some reaction from this infuriating creature. ‘Yes, Emmy. Up at the House – like before.’

Charlotte, face glowing above the snowy folds of wedding white, saw her mother flinch. She had no idea what Aunt Grace had just said, but those two were always disputing. Charlotte had been progressively saddened by the deterioration in her mother over the years. Some secret heartache seemed to be consuming her, which Charlotte had always presumed to be the premature loss of a loved husband. Grace had ruled the roost ever since – and this mystifying venue at the village hall – instead of in the ample rooms and grounds of their home at Westerfield House – was clearly the result of yet another absurd battle between the eccentric sisters; a battle which Emmaline, uncharacteristically, had won. She saw her mother jerk suddenly, as though Grace had jabbed her with a pin, and the frail old face turned almost coyly to look across at the bride, whose own face now showed the concern and puzzlement the past few days had brought. Her mother smiled and nodded in pathetic travesty of pleasure, and began to pick feebly at the food before her.

Charlotte smiled back and sighed, tears dangerously close, then turned quickly away to look about the throng that swayed and roared. She sighed and settled back with silken rustlings, feeling suddenly detached and unreal – as if she were an unseen spirit hovering, watching strangers at some strange ritual of which she had no part. A surprising sense of regret stole over her as the country cadences burred and buzzed around her. She became aware of how impossibly remote now were those homely voices and weather-stained faces of her early girlhood. Many here today would remember her father, Squire Westerfield – last of a line of well-off landowners to inhabit their big house on the village outskirts. She could hardly remember his dying, nor what he looked like, but knew his estates had since dwindled through poor management. Her widowed mother had clearly made sacrifices to send her off, at the age of eight, to private schooling in distant Bristol, and thence, three years later, to the ‘College for Young Ladies’ in London. There she had boarded, returning home between terms, yet kept always from mixing with the village children, oppressed by her mother’s inexplicable fussing and deep secretive looks she would never explain to her bright daughter. Always Charlotte had been guiltily glad to get away. And today, she acknowledged with a sigh, was no exception.

She had become a finely-groomed young lady, impeccably spoken, well-versed in music and art, etiquette and deportment. She’d been a governess, transmitting her learning and gracious ways to the daughters of earls. Strange indeed it felt, then, to be seated here in the same rustic hall only faintly remembered from rained-off fêtes of childhood. She was twenty, and the village lads could only stare in oafish awe at the porcelain princess she’d become. Champagne teased her blood, easing her natural shyness – and she smiled elegantly into the butcher’s wife’s stare, trying to think of something to say. But only prim, high-sounding sentences formed in her mind. She felt empty and futile, dismayingly unable to communicate those warm, earthy feelings she wanted to feel. Even her laugh, she knew, rang falsely here, like a well-tuned bell – not shrieking gloriously up from the belly like the village girls she’d never learned to talk to. Her mother and Grace would be horrified, she knew, at such base thoughts.

A hand settled over hers and she swallowed hard, knowing so well the curious feel of the brine-hardened skin over those great knuckles. She looked up at Grenville, and the sense of loss flowed away. His face she loved like an old toy, battered from his prize-fighting days – the broken nose attractively ill-set, the face tough-looking until the grin softened the hard eyes with humour, and kindness showed. ‘Whe. . .