Free Ritual by David Pinner

below her breasts where the bra had cut into her body. Just thinking about herself naked, excited her. She wasn’t just fond of herself. She was in love.
    Hanlin observed all this, as she intended he should. He decided to apply the fourth degree.
    ‘Anna, what do you know about your illustrious Squire?’
    ‘Oh, not much! But it is rumoured that Cready has some kind of hold on him. Financially, I suspect. I suppose you didn’t know that Cready now lives in the Squire’s Manor. Has for the last six years. And the poor old Squire, who is a honey, has to live in a cottage east of the woods. A couple of fields away, that is. These sculptures are really super! And I mean that!’
    ‘Yes, I think I’ll visit our Squire. This is a very scintillating village, you know, examined from a great distance—preferably London! I must admit, I love the way the villagers have taken to me—right to the heart! Such hospitality! And, oh, so helpful! Do you know, I haven’t had one straight answer to one straight question? It’s all been carefully parcelled up with secrets and suspicion. Why? Unless they have something to hide? A private darkness that is quietly corrupting the law. What a galaxy of planets we have here! There’s Gypo, the sadist—Squire Fenn, the fluter—Lawrence Cready, the actor—the children, the Indians—your Father, the peacemaker—your Mother, the danger—and you, what in the name of indiscretion are you? The evening corrupter? The brassiere loosener? The phallus teaser? It’s endless! Oh, and I forgot the Reverend White! The God killer! I will return.’
    He moved toward the door. She stopped him.
    ‘You suffer from too much police sophistication, David, my lamb. People are never so complex—or so simple. They are just lovely people—as you will see—if you pull back your eyelids. Oh, but you are a beautiful carver!’
    David ignored this, picked up his half finished paperknife and a chisel, and left the house.
    It took him twenty minutes to reach the Squire’s cottage, having been misled by one of the twins and the cat butcher. There was a definite subconscious hysteria in every villager he had met so far. It was too much to believe that everyone was suffering from guilt. Or was it? Since he had arrived he had acquired no definite proof of anything. Simply tremors. Blood tremors. Why, for instance, was the Priest so verbose? So unworried about sacrilege and so positive in avoiding the Police? Then, there’s the children, brought up in this climate of distrust. Their minds already cankered. The Police image to them was equivalent to Satan. But what, and here was the problem, but what did Satan mean to them? Was he the Devil? Or had they turned him into God?
    Dark and light are only of the mind. They are inter-changeable. It is a matter of opinion whether the dun-yellow of twilight is the growing of the dark, or simply the dying of the light. To the children maybe, the light interferes with the dark. Perhaps the villagers have trained themselves and their children to love the dark. Have they discovered the sexual release of fear? And do they need the night to cover them? What were they doing in the loft before I went in?
    Questions sprouted in the Inspector’s head. He paused outside the flaking garden gate of the Squire’s cottage. Strange flute notes crept out of the cottage. They were discordant, pursuing something beyond music. The notes were haunting, hunting something in the Inspector. They cut through all the musical rhythms he could remember. He found he wanted to dance. Not exactly dance, but lift one foot after the other, slowly. The sequence of sound seemed to limpet all the notes together until it concentrated into a howl. That’s it! That! It was an experiment in sound. In evil?
    A snort of pain assisted the music. The Inspector listened for some time to the counterpoint, before realising the snorting came from a white horse in the field next to the cottage. It was neighing in fear.