Intrigue in the Village (Turnham Malpas 10) (6 page)

Why couldn’t she come straight out with it? ‘I think I know what you’re hinting at, but I don’t do it for nothing. You have to pay. I have my expenses.’

‘Oh! Of course. I wouldn’t expect you to. Five pounds, I understand. I’ll pay in advance. Here. Look. When’s the next . . . ’ She gave another of her knowing winks.

‘Tonight as it happens and there’ll be room. Eight-thirty sharp. No parking outside.’

Venetia passed her the five-pound note with a sleight of hand movement, as though the room was full of people who mustn’t know. ‘Absolutely. Understood. Thank you. See you then.’

Maggie tucked the note into the jug Dave had won for her at a fair. He’d had the choice of two jugs and to her annoyance he’d chosen the one she thought the least attractive of the two, but sentiment made her keep it when she’d moved. It seemed right to keep the money in there
too. After all, it was Dave who’d got her into this lark in the beginning. It felt like a lucky charm. That made five for tonight. Perfect.

By eight minutes past eight the room was ready. A fire was burning in the grate, black plastic tulips in a black vase stood on the round table – it had to be round, couldn’t be square – and incense sticks burned on the mantelpiece, the hearth and the sideboard. She switched off the main light so the room was illuminated by the flames of the fire and a small table lamp with an almost transparent red cloth laid over the shade to create a mystical, fiery glow.

Maggie sat down to wait, getting herself in the mood. This old house did more for the atmosphere than that ghastly flat had done. Old memories, which the house had stored over the centuries, seemed to swirl around the room, and the flickering flames sometimes made her guests shudder with fear, for, once she’d got them going, the shadows they made appeared like people moving around the room. Ghostly, really.

At twenty-five past eight, the first of the guests arrived. It was the Senior twins, dressed in black from head to foot. They left their woolly hats at home when they came to one of Maggie’s meetings and wore black headscarves instead. They each put their five-pound notes into the jug in the centre of the table and sat down next to each other. Then came Venetia, very obviously hyped up about the meeting, who took her place opposite the Senior sisters and next to Maggie herself. Conversation was never encouraged at the start so they sat in silence. Next to come was Greta Jones, then one of the weekenders dressed in what she considered was appropriate clothing for the
country; namely cords, and a woolly rustic embroidered sweater, which disguised her bulges very effectively. She never gave her name, even though she’d been a member of the group since its initiation.

Once all the five-pound notes had been put in the jug, it was removed along with the black tulips, and Maggie placed her hands, fingers widespread, on the polished table.

‘I feel the spirits very strongly tonight. They’re all around, I know,’ she said. Her guests followed suit and their fingertips made a complete linking circle. Total silence fell.

The only movements in the dark were the shadows made by the flames on the walls. The corners of the room were eerie and threatening and the atmosphere was supercharged with anticipation. On occasion, Maggie went straight into a trance, other times it took a while for the spirits to move her. When Maggie’s head began rolling from side to side and a low moaning came from her throat, they knew she was almost away with the spirits. Slowly, her head began circling motions, dropping on to her chest and then backwards over the back of her seat, with such increasing violence it seemed it might drop off, and the moaning grew louder.

Then, in a voice totally unlike her own, she called out as though in agony, ‘Who’s there? Who’s there?’

The fire sparked, momentarily flooding the room with light. Only Maggie’s eyes were closed, her heavy lids pressed tight together, her dark purple lips twisted tortuously as though trying to frame words that would not come. Venetia coughed; Greta Jones shuddered; the
Senior sisters pressed closer to each other; the eyes of the weekender darted hither and thither with fear.

‘Who’s there?’ came the shuddering cry of Maggie Dobbs.

Then she shrieked and her voice became unearthly. ‘It’s me. I’ve a message for one of you. I see jars and jars and . . . labels and . . . jam, that’s right . . .’

Greta Jones’s eyes grew large. ‘Oh God!’

‘A message. Yes. You have trouble where you work. Someone doesn’t like you. Take care. There’s trouble with . . .’

‘Yes?’ croaked Greta Jones.

There was a long, shuddering sigh and then silence.

Whispering more to herself than anyone, Greta Jones said, ‘That’s Linda, I bet. It’ll be her, no doubt. She’s been sparring for a fight for weeks.’

The spirit’s voice continued. ‘Where are the twins?’

The Senior sisters jerked in unison.

‘They’re both well,’ answered Maggie in her own voice. ‘They’re here. Do you have a message for them?’

Silence. And then a voice spoke through Maggie as though from the depths of the grave. ‘They are not well. They’re full of sin. I know. I keep a constant watch. My heart bleeds. Bleeds. Si-i-i-n-n-n.’

The Senior sisters shook with terror.

‘What is their sin? What have they done? Tell us if you can.’

‘Thieves! Thieves, I say.’ Again the unearthly tones filtered through every shadow. ‘Shame on you. I saw, I saw. I’ve kept watch since the first day I came here. I know my twins’ every move.’

The sisters’ faces drained to dead white, horror paralysing them.

The voice from the grave continued. ‘There’ll be a punishment to come for what they’ve done. A punishment more terrible than anything they’ve ever known.’

The sister seated next to Greta Jones collapsed against her and it was all Greta could do to stop her falling to the floor. The circle was broken. Maggie gave a great cry. The cat jumped on Venetia’s knee and she screamed and screamed with shock. Alarmed, it jumped off, knocked over the table lamp, and the bulb shattered on the hearth, leaving them in darkness except for the light of the flames.

The weekender leapt to her feet to flick the switch for the centre light. Greta Jones shrieked, ‘No! No! Maggie’s not come out of her trance, it could kill her.’

There were five hearts beating far too fast and five people wishing the light could be turned on. Maggie snapped her fingers twice and came back to life.

‘Dear God! What was the message? It must have been terrible. I got such vibrations! More like shock waves. What happened?’ Maggie lay back in her chair exhausted, apparently drained of life. She always said the sprirts were something separate from herself and that she knew nothing when she ‘awoke’.

Greta Jones was the first to find her voice. ‘It was the twins’ mother. She says, well, she says they’ve been stealing and they can expect a terrible punishment.’ Greta choked on her last words, hardly daring to say what they’d heard.

Maggie, visibly shaking, went in the kitchen and got herself a drink of water, then came back to sit down. ‘Well, have you?’

Speaking as one, the two sisters whispered, ‘We have! We have!’

‘Then you’d better put it to rights, hadn’t you?’

They both got out their handkerchiefs and wiped their eyes.

‘Mother always knows best.’

‘She said so when she was here.’

‘We can’t give it back though.’

Maggie enquired what it was they’d stolen.

‘F-f-food from the w-w-wedding p-p-arty.’

‘But we’ve eaten it.’

‘Except there’s still some wedding cake in the tin.’

‘We could put that back.’

Maggie shrugged. ‘That’s it for tonight. I can’t do no more. Not tonight. I’m shattered.’

Greta’s hand clutched Maggie’s. ‘Of course, we understand. Same time next week?’

Maggie nodded and lay back, her eyes closed.

Greta got to her feet. ‘That’s it then. We’d better go. What a night! The best for a while.’

‘Don’t you always hear voices from the other side then?’ Venetia asked of Greta, disappointed no one from the other side had had a message for her.

‘Sometimes it’s all jumbled and we can’t tell who it is. But tonight! We couldn’t have had a clearer message, could we? Come on, you two, we’ll walk home together seeing as I pass your house. Take my arm.’

The Senior sisters each took an arm and they went home, weak at the knees, desperate to figure out how they could make amends. For their mother to know they were still stealing . . . it really was too terrible to contemplate! And the punishment, what would that be? Their mother
was a past master at punishments. They’d been glad when she died, but apparently after seven years of silence, she’d returned from the grave to watch over them.

Maggie sat back in her chair, sipping from the glass of water. Talk about getting what they paid for. She needed more than water tonight. From the sideboard cupboard she took a bottle of whisky and tipped a sturdy measure into what remained of the water. When she sat down again, her cat climbed up on to her knee, kneading its claws into her leg, purring like a kettle on the hob, glad they were on their own again. Maggie sipped the whisky and water, and smiled to herself.

Next morning Maggie found a parcel waiting on the doorstep of the main door of the school. It was very neatly put together and closely bound with Sellotape. It was about the size of four bars of toilet soap and was addressed to Mrs Fitch.

With all the instructions about bombs nowadays she did wonder whether she should call the bomb squad. It was kind of the right size for such a thing, but she guessed what it was; the wedding cake the Senior sisters had stolen. She placed it on Mrs Fitch’s desk with a malevolent smile. She supposed it could be a bomb. How could she know? She hadn’t got X-ray eyes, had she?

She was inspecting the boys’ toilets when Mrs Fitch called out, ‘Mrs Dobbs, where did you find this parcel?’

‘On the doorstep, Mrs Fitch. When I came in at eight.’

‘How strange. I wonder what it is?’

‘One way to find out.’

‘Yes. Of course.’

And as Maggie had anticipated, it was wedding cake.
How they’d got a piece that size in their bag without being noticed Maggie couldn’t work out. She’d seen them stuffing rolls and tiny Scotch eggs in, and pieces of salmon carefully inched into plastic bags and then put in their huge handbags. But they must must have taken a whole quarter of the cake’s top tier.

Kate looked at it, puzzled. Why should anyone want to send her a piece of her own wedding cake? It was ridiculous. She shrugged and put it by the side of her handbag ready for going home. Home, where she would find Beano and Dandy waiting with Craddock. At first, he hadn’t taken kindly to her two cats, and had almost decided to say no to them, but at the last minute they’d been reprieved. Living at the Big House, they were closer than ever to their favourite hunting grounds and were really only seen in the evenings when, worn out by hunting all day, they curled up straight after their supper and were no trouble to anyone. But going home to Craddock was the best bit. He wanted to hear all her news and if his attention did wander after a while, who could blame him? To eat an evening meal with someone almost every night of the week, and no housework to do was bliss. And her career remained intact, too.

She glanced at the clock and saw it was time for the bell. Kate had had a perfectly splendid day teaching her top class. As the school was so small, she taught two age groups together, Years Six and Seven, and loved every moment. The Bliss boys were clever. She knew that from the first day. In fact, they were very clever. It was a pity their clothes were so dreadful. There was apparently no question of them wearing school uniform, and it irritated
her that no effort had been made to kit them out. She held them back after school that day to ask.

‘Sorry, miss, this is all we have.’ Philip spoke as though that was that and there was no point in any further discussion.

Paul added, ‘Sorry, miss.’ And looked acutely embarrassed.

‘I see. Tell your mother to come to see me one day soon and we’ll have a talk.’

‘Right, miss.’

Very gently Kate replied, ‘And my name is Mrs Fitch, not miss.’

‘Yes, Mrs Fitch,’ they said in unison.

‘Be sharp, or the bus will have gone.’

And it had. Leaving two small girls crying by the gate, not daring to get on the minibus without their brothers for protection.

Philip came back in. ‘Miss! It’s gone.’

‘Gone? But they know you get on with the girls. The silly man. Don’t worry, I’ll take you home.’

‘No. We’ll walk.’ He hurried out.

Kate called after him, ‘Wait! I’ll take you.’

She grabbed her handbag, shouted, ‘Good night, Mrs Dobbs,’ and caught up with them as they rounded the corner into Church Hill. ‘Come back and get in the car.’ When she saw Philip about to open his mouth to object, she said, ‘That’s an order.’ She stood half smiling, arms folded, looking stern.

She saw the struggle in Philip’s face, the embarrassment in Paul’s and the delight in the girls’ faces when they realized they wouldn’t have to walk all that way home to Little Derehams.

‘I shall drop you off wherever you say. Come along.’