Potions Are for Pushovers

by Tamara Berry

  “It was Mrs. Brennigan,” Lenora supplies.

  I swivel to stare at her. “Really?” Sweet Mrs. Brennigan? Friendly Mrs. Brennigan? Enjoying-her-second-honeymoon-thanks-to-yours-truly Mrs. Brennigan?

  “Oh, yeah,” Rachel says with a snap of her fingers. “It was her. She stayed and talked with us the longest, and she didn’t act like we were being annoying the way some of the other ladies did. I like her, Ellie, don’t you?”

  “I do like her,” I admit. “But what I don’t like is the idea of either of you going anywhere near monkshood. That stuff is toxic, you guys—really toxic.”

  The two girls share a knowing look.

  “I’m not kidding. One touch, and it can kill you.”

  Their knowing look doesn’t dissipate in the slightest.

  “How does it kill you?” Rachel asks.

  “Yeah,” Lenora adds. “What are the exact symptoms?”

  The fact that Sarah Blackthorne died of wolfsbane poisoning isn’t common knowledge yet. Like the pig’s missing heart, the news will probably get around the village eventually, because, well, that’s what news does in places like this. For now, however, the word is that she was poisoned, end of story.

  I’m debating the wisdom of being the one to impart the news to these two young, impressionable women when a knock sounds at my door. Never one to give credit to unseen forces, I nevertheless cast up a silent prayer in thanks. The monkshood-wolfsbane-violent-death conversation wasn’t one I was looking forward to having with these two.

  “Ooh, is that someone coming to order a spell from you?” Lenora asks as she springs to her feet. “Quick—what should I say?”

  “Not a single word,” I reply. “And if you absolutely can’t help yourself, a simple hello will do the trick.”

  Lenora giggles. My powers of clairvoyance tell me she’s going to once again delight over what a comedienne I’m turning out to be, so I block her out and rise to answer the door.

  I don’t share Lenora’s belief that it’s a potential customer. Not only would the back door be a more likely entry point, but I haven’t seen any clients since Sarah Blackthorne died—not even anyone passing through and hoping I sell cannabis, which is an unfortunately common occurrence. If I thought I could get away with becoming a pot dispensary on top of everything else, I’d do it. Alas, even I’m not willing to push Inspector Piper that far.

  “Lewis!” I cry upon seeing the less glorious of the two King brothers on the other side of the door. He looks much as he always does, which is to say his clothes could use a good ironing and his facial hair has once again reached the overgrown shrubbery stage. He also looks, unless I’m very much mistaken, even more exhausted than he did the last time we met. “Come in, please. I was just, uh, holding a lecture for my two apprentices.”

  I will the two girls to put all evidence of werewolf-related research materials out of sight of my guest, but my powers fall flat.

  “L-lecture? Apprentices?” Lewis peers around me to examine the scene for himself. He makes as if to back away, but I’m not about to lose this opportunity to continue our chat. “I should c-come back. . . .”

  “No, no. We were just finishing up in here. It’s a school night, so they should be getting home.”

  “But, Ellie, it’s only—”

  “Four o’clock already, I know.” I feign a heavy sigh. “There’s just not enough time in the day, is there? We’ll try to get the rest of this done tomorrow.”

  My powers fail here, too. Neither Rachel nor Lenora budges from the spot, both of them showing an alarming tendency to become permanent residents.

  “Maybe you can help us, Mr. King,” Rachel says in a sweet voice I instantly mistrust. “We’re researching werewolf folklore for Lenora’s school project and are hoping to get firsthand witness accounts. Have you ever encountered one? In real life, I mean?”

  I groan inwardly. It’s hardly the ideal question to put to a man whose aunt recently died from wolfsbane poisoning, but there’s no taking it back now.

  “M-me?” he asks, eyes wide. “N-no, of course not. Why would I?”

  “Well, I don’t know. That’s why we’re doing research.” She flutters her long lashes in a way that’s alarmingly beguiling. If the boys at the art gallery aren’t lining up with offers to take her out, my elixir must be seriously defective. “What about werewolf legends? Do you know any?”

  “L-legends?”

  Lenora, no longer pleased to play second fiddle to her idol, pipes up with a clipped, academic air, “Werewolf mythology dates back to the ancient Greeks, and almost all Western cultures have their own variation. Even the Babylonians had a few.”

  “Y-yes, w-well.” Lewis’s stammering grows more pronounced, and his gaze shifts uneasily to mine. “I don’t know anything about the B-Babylonians. I only wanted to . . .”

  Whatever he wanted is lost to the beads of perspiration gathering on his brow. He pulls out a handkerchief and mops his forehead, looking at me with such desperation I immediately take pity on him.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Lewis?”

  His relief is so profound it’s almost comical. “Yes, p-please. Do you have more of that c-cordial?”

  I have several bottles of it, in fact, all of them waiting for just such a demand on my hospitality. I also have several bottles of stronger spirits that might help soothe him, but if he intends to keep sweating like that, he’s going to need to hold on to as many of his fluids as he can.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll grab an extra bottle for you to take with you. Would your brother like one, too, do you think?”

  His limbs jerk, and he bumps his hip on a side table. All of the contents—a book on poisons I’ve been reading, a stack of Horse & Hound magazines I can’t convince the publisher to stop sending me, and the box of elephant tranquilizers brought by the postman earlier today—fall in a heap to the ground.

  Lewis barely seems to notice the disarray. “M-my brother?”

  “I met him yesterday at the vicarage. A nice man. He seemed quite popular with the ladies.”

  “Richard is here?” He casts a wild look around. “N-now?”

  The girls are starting to show signs of uneasiness, almost as though Lewis’s nerves are contagious. I can hardly blame them for it; this whole jump-and-sweat routine is starting to make me twitchy.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” I find myself saying. “Have a drink, relax, maybe even stay for a bite to eat. Have you been finding it any easier to sleep now that you’ve settled in?”

  “S-sleep?” he echoes, his voice incredulous. “S-sleep?”

  Never, in all my life, have I come across a man who needs it more. “Yes,” I say firmly. “Sleep. I can give you something to help with it, if you’d like.”

  My offer is soundly rejected. With another of those strange jerks, he shakes his head and begins backing toward the door. “I’m sorry. I have to g-go.” He sees the girls sitting open mouthed and watching him and adds, “It was a m-mistake to come here.”

  The only mistake, as far as I can see, was mentioning his brother, but I don’t regret making it. Not when it resulted in such a violent reaction. I might be the person with the most access to poison around here, but I had no motive to murder Sarah, no grudge to hold against her.

  Lewis King, however? Spasmodically nervous Lewis? Cordial-guzzling Lewis? Not-getting-any-inheritance-because-it’s-all-going-to-the-Tennis-Foundation Lewis?

  He wastes no more time on pleasantries. After a few fumbling attempts to rearrange the spilled contents from the table, he turns on his heel and flees out the front door.

  Almost immediately, I wish I’d thought to flee with him.

  “Lenora, did you see the color of his eyes—?”

  “I saw. And did you notice all that wild hair everywhere—?”

  “I noticed. Plus, how pale and sweaty he was, even though it’s cold outside—?”

  “That too. And his excessive thirst. That was in one of the articles—”
<
br />   “And that big old book. You know what this means—?”

  “Oh, yeah. I know.”

  I turn on the girls, an expression of firm resolve on my face. “Don’t you dare say it, you two. I know what you’re thinking, but there’s no way Lewis King is a—”

  “Werewolf!” They speak, or rather scream, the word in unison.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, feeling the weight of my years crashing down on my shoulders. If this is a punishment for all those decades I spent making people believe their homes were haunted, I can only assume the worst is yet to come.

  Granted, the girls aren’t completely off base. There is something seriously strange about Lewis King, if only the fact that he’s been in a downward spiral since he arrived here. The man I met at the pub hadn’t been a sparkling conversationalist, by any means, but he was genial enough in an ordinary, my-aunt-just-died sort of way.

  Yes, his facial hair does seem to grow awfully fast for a normal human male. And, sure, that musky smell of his leaves a little to be desired. But the man isn’t a werewolf. It’s probably just poor personal hygiene.

  “It’s a great theory, you guys, really it is, but you have to remember that Lewis wasn’t even here when Mr. Worthington’s pig was killed. I found Regina late on Thursday evening, and he didn’t arrive until Friday morning. He took the early train from London.”

  At this sound piece of logic, Lenora’s lower lip protrudes in a pout. Rachel, however, shows none of that youthful tendency toward moping. Her look is much more cunning, her eyes pulled upward as though she’s working through a series of particularly difficult sums.

  “One-oh-three,” she mutters. “Two-sixteen. No, that’s the fifteen-ninety. Ha! I knew it.”

  “You knew what?” I ask, not liking the self-satisfied smile moving across her face.

  “There is no early train on Fridays.”

  I blink. “There isn’t?”

  “Nope.” Her self-satisfied smile deepens into one of pure delight. “With all the commuting I have to do for my internship, I’ve got just about every route that goes back and forth between here and London memorized—and Friday morning’s train is an outbound one, not an incoming one. Either he lied about when he got in, or he didn’t travel by train at all. What did he tell you?”

  I think back on that first meeting with Lewis, of Nicholas’s obvious dislike of the man and the rumpled state that led me to sympathize with his hurried train travel. Lewis never actually confirmed that he took the train—he only cast me that bewildered look when I hazarded a guess.

  Now that I think about it, that look could have meant anything. Especially since I’ve come to know Lewis a little better, and it’s obvious that hirsute disarray is his natural state of being.

  “He didn’t tell me the exact time he arrived,” I admit, somewhat sheepish. “I just assumed—”

  “Aha!” Lenora jumps to her feet, her hands clasped in front of her. “So he is a werewolf.”

  I hold up my hands to slow her down. Yes, I make mistakes from time to time, but there’s a difference between misreading a travel-rumpled shirt and accusing a man of shapeshifting into a beast of the night.

  “You know what this means, Lenny,” Rachel says.

  Oh, sure. Now Rachel gets to her feet. Now she makes a motion to depart.

  “Since when are we calling her Lenny?” I ask.

  “I like it. Lenora makes me sound like an old woman. Lenny is a sleuth. A bloodhound. A gumshoe.” She flashes her signature toothy grin at Rachel. “And, yes, I do know what it means.”

  That makes two of us. I’ve spent enough time in the company of these two girls to realize that werewolves have nothing on their bloodthirsty determination. They won’t rest until they’ve torn this case apart with their bare hands.

  “We’re heading to the train station,” Lenora says with a pump of her fist in the air. “Field trip!”

  I hold back my sigh. Short of calling up Lenny’s stepmother and having her come collect her wayward burden, there’s not much I can do to stop this pair. I can only accompany them and hope that my attempts at responsible adult supervision will keep me from being permanently banned from all future school activities.

  “Don’t forget to add the bus station, taxi stand, and private airfield into the mix,” I say as I reach for my shawl. At their look of sudden inquiry, I add, “Anything worth doing is worth doing all the way. Even if he didn’t arrive by train, he still had to get here somehow. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will remember when they saw him come in.”

  “You mean . . . ?” Rachel’s eyes widen.

  What I mean is that if Lewis King didn’t arrive by train on Friday morning, as I originally thought, then there’s no accounting for his whereabouts the day of the pig’s death . . . or the evening of Sarah Blackthorne’s. For the first time since I started this whole investigation, it seems I officially have a suspect.

  But “I mean you did great work” is what I tell her. “You have a good memory, Rachel. I’m not sure I would have known about the train schedules on my own.”

  She shows every sign of falling into enthusiastic glee at this, but I stop her before she manages to fling her arms around me. “But a word of warning—and I mean this with every fiber of my being. You two will not do any investigating without me, understand?” I lower my voice so Lenora can’t overhear. The younger girl is busy shoving papers and books into her backpack. I have no idea how she’ll make them all fit, but at least it keeps her busy. “Lenora looks up to you. She trusts you. I don’t mind if you keep researching werewolves together, but you’ll stick to books and museums while I’m not around, or I’m ending this entire project.”

  To her credit, Rachel accepts my authority with a solemnity worthy of a Hartford. “Of course, Ellie. I’d never do anything dangerous.” She pauses, choosing her next words carefully. “Does this mean you think Lewis might really be a werewolf? As in, for reals?”

  “The world is a strange and mysterious place,” I say, unwilling to commit myself one way or another. “In my lifetime, I’ve seen—and heard—many things that defy explanation.”

  My dead sister, for example. There’s no denying that her voice falls under the strange and mysterious category.

  I stop and start, recalling all too clearly my visit to Sarah Blackthorne’s kitchen, when Winnie mocked my theory about the rat poison with her usual laughing air. I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but I remember now that Lewis asked if I’d spoken aloud. It was almost as though he, too, had heard her voice speaking from afar.

  But that’s ridiculous. No one hears Winnie but me. No one except Beast, anyway. And maybe that mouse at the crossroads. And . . . Oh, dear.

  “What is it, Ellie?” Rachel asks. “What’s wrong?”

  “A werewolf is technically an animal,” I say.

  “I know, right? That’s what makes them so cool.”

  True. It’s also what makes them not real. They’re fake. Make-believe. An unreliable myth in a world full of rigid rules and natural laws.

  Just like the possibility of a woman speaking to me from beyond the grave.

  * * *

  A man is hovering outside my back door when I return home.

  The survey that Rachel, Lenora, and I made of the numerous transportation outfits in this part of Sussex took much longer than I anticipated. What remains of the sun—a watery, feeble vessel that’s close to giving up altogether—is now crossing over the horizon, leaving me standing in the dawning twilight with nary a soul to be seen for miles.

  Except, of course, for the strange man.

  “Hello?” I call, careful not to startle him into fight or flight. Neither one of those things is an ideal outcome when standing alone in the dark. Fight, because I’m a small woman and I don’t carry weapons on my person; flight, because if it’s Lewis again, I don’t want to scare him away before we have a chance to talk.

  Especially after our findings. No one at the bus station, train station,
taxi stand, or airfield could remember seeing Lewis come in, even under the deep persuasion of Rachel’s batting eyelashes. We also visited a few of the nearby gas stations in hopes that he might have rented a car and filled up along the way, but the man seems to have appeared from out of nowhere.

  Or, according to my sidekicks, he transformed into his wolf form and ran through the hillsides under the light of the waxing moon.

  Giddy adolescent girls, as it turns out, don’t make the best sidekicks.

  “Can I help you with something?” I add, drawing closer. There’s a rain gutter to my right that I might be able to pull down and wield like a club, should the need arise, but there’s something about that slight form that looks familiar. A spot of orange light extinguishing in the growing darkness and a waft of smoke washing over me confirm it.

  “Hello, Inspector,” I say. “I see the lollipops aren’t working out as well as you’d hoped. Case getting to you?”

  Inspector Piper steps out from the shadows. He looks much as he always does, sharp and suspicious, and he’s wearing a grimace I assume is the result of being caught cigarette handed.

  “They always do,” he says. And then, with a slight tilt of his head, “I came to inspect your garden.”

  “In the dark?”

  He glances up at the black-tinted sky. “It was daylight when I got here.”

  Considering I left with the girls a little after four o’clock, that gives him several hours in which he could have been sitting here waiting for me. If he’s smart—and he is—he already took a good, hard look at the garden and all its contents.

  Not that he’d have found anything. The previous owner of this cottage did an incredible job with the grounds, transforming a small, walled-off plot of land into an herbal and floral retreat from the world. I’ve added a few plants of my own, but with the exception of those duplicitous daffodils, there’s nothing growing in it that could be used to harm another human being.

  “And?” I ask. “What did you find?”

  I unlock the back door and push it open, gesturing for the inspector to follow me in. He makes a show of wiping his feet on the mat, leaving a heavy smattering of mud behind.