“I'm on it.”
Malcolm's deceptively keen mind had already begun sifting through the possibilities. As soon as they had said their goodbyes, he eased his bulk from his favoured perch, and ambled into the body of the shop, looking about him thoughtfully...
**********
“Well, that settles it.” Ruby turned to address the others. “Devizes and Nutter are definitely up to no good. And it would seem that their plans are more than slightly... horticultural... in nature.”
That was another way in which Malcolm was now a useful ally. He was, whether he realised it or not, her spy in the Devizes camp.
**********
True to Ruby's prediction, late that afternoon, a familiar, thin, spidery shadow crept up the Reverend's garden path. A bony, translucent-skinned fist raised the old, black iron knocker and crashed it back three times against the wooden door.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Reverend Phullaposi answered, opening the door no wider than a crack, from which he peered out, twitching a little, but trying to look as calm and natural as possible. He was no actor, however.
Hariman smiled his wide, sharp-toothed, crocodile smile.
“Good afternoon Reverend. Aren't you going to invite me in? We have sooooo much to discuss, concerning our village's fête, and the doorstep is not really the appropriate place to conduct such business, now, is it?”
Reverend Phullaposi nodded his acknowledgement and opened the door a little wider so that the Doctor could make his entrance into the Vicarage.
Once inside Hariman tried the same technique as Ruby; complimenting the Reverend's taste in his collection of watercolour paintings. The big difference was that Ruby had actually meant what she said, while the Doctor’s words rung hollow and false. The Reverend recognised this at once, and thus the differing sincerity of his two visitors.
Hariman settled himself on the settee.
The Reverend hopped nervously from foot to foot, rather like a small boy who badly needed to go to the toilet. He was not at ease at all, even though Ruby had told him in advance what would happen. It was one thing to be told about a forthcoming ordeal; it was a completely different matter to be subjected to it.
“Tea?” he offered, totally at a loss at what else to say. “I've bought some Ruby recommended and...”
“Thank you, but no.” Hariman shivered, all-too-aware that any tea Ruby had recommended would not be for his palate at all. “Let us get straight to business... As you are aware, tomorrow is the Village fête The very fête that my associates and I have expended so much time and effort to ensure the success of. And this is why I am here, as their representative. We feel, seeing as you will no doubt benefit so greatly from our little... Rosy-Crustacean society, that there ought to be something a little more... legally binding between us, something written down... Something... clerical. It is not that we do not trust your word... You are, after all, a respected man of the cloth. But, money changes everything, and my associates and I feel that it would be better to sort out the legal obligations of all parties now, before any profits have been made, rather than for it to all end up in tears and acrimony later..”
Hariman offered what he considered to be the warmest of his cold smiles. From out of his thick, black wool suit jacket pocket, he produced a document of vellum. It looked very old, but the Doctor insisted that it had been drawn up that very morning:
“Look, the ink is still fresh.”
The Reverend was getting more uncomfortable with the situation with every passing second.
“Now, look here,” he stuttered, “When we began all this, you didn't mention anything about any legal documents... What difference does it make?”
“I've told you,” Hariman’s voice was quiet, oily-smooth and reassuring. “It's a mere formality. Just a quick flick of the pen and it will all be legal. This document merely releases the rights to the use of the flower, nothing more. A very simple, yet necessary legal requirement, to tie up all the loose ends, so we all know where we stand from this point on. So we all know what we're getting, and we all get what's coming to us. Now.....”
The Reverend didn't like the implications one bit.
“What do you mean, now? How soon is now? You better leave it with me, so I can have my own legal people go through it. Like you said, better safe than sorry, and if it is a mere formality, I'll gladly sign it, as soon as they give me the nod.”
Hariman wasn't happy. Barely able to conceal his frustration, he tried a different tack.
“Come on now, Vic, old pal. Old mate. We've no time for all of that ‘he said, we said, they said, what she said, party of the third part’ cobblers; all of that legal gobbledegook solicitors throw in just to stall and run up the bill for themselves. Our fête is tomorrow; we need to act now, to seal our pact and our fête. So, please, please, please, let me get what I want, this time. I know we had a couple of squabbles recently, but let's kiss and make up. We are, after all, on the very brink of history. Isn't that worth committing to paper? Just sign and I will be on my way.”
He leaned forward pushing the document into the Reverend's hands.
“Sign. And all our dreams may come true. Sign it. Do it so that you can look after your wife in the custom that she deserves. Do it, so that all the hard work on all sides is not for nothing. Do it! So we don't all have to stay in this God-awful, tedious, twee, chocolate-box English village forever! Just – Just do it!”
Hariman's patience was wearing thin, his badgering manner increasingly threatening.
At that moment Elise, the Reverend's wife, entered the room pushing a tea trolley, complete with teapot, cups, saucers, milk jug and a small plate of biscuits.
“I heard you both having a chin-wag and thought that you may appreciate some small refreshment?”
“How kind,” said Reverend Phullaposi, glad of the diversion and distraction of tea.
Before anybody could say, yea, nay or whatever was their preference, Elise had filled three delicate china cups full of the steaming beverage, neatly placed a biscuit on each of the respective saucers and handed a cup each to the Reverend and Hariman.
The Doctor tried to protest that he was neither thirsty, nor hungry, but Elise was having none of it.
“This is a toast to the fête!” she trilled.
She raised her own cup into the air with her delicate hand. “To the village fête.” She knocked back the tea in a single gulp, like a Russian drinking vodka.
The Reverend followed suit, and with much muttering and trepidation, so did Hariman.
He had just enough time for a single thought – “Not again!” – as he felt his throat rapidly constrict in response to the hot, milky, fragrant liquid.
And then he was on the floor, choking, hacking, retching. He could feel himself losing control.
‘Poof!’
There was a great explosion and a simultaneous puff of green smoke, and the Reverend and Elise were suddenly alone in their sitting room. Hariman was gone. The only evidence he was ever there were the parchment he was so insistent that the Reverend should sign, still sitting on the table where he had left it, a faint greenish tinge in the air, and a slightly sulphurous, rotten egg smell.
“Is he always so energetic on departure, dear?” asked Elise.
Reverend Phullaposi decided that life was far too energetic in general at the moment. He leaned back against the wall and slowly slid down the striped wallpapered in a mixture of relief and shock.
He needed to consult Ruby. He felt in great want of some reassurance that the situation was not spiralling completely out of his control.
Chapter 11
All That Glitters...
The Reverend arrived at Ruby's, flustered and more than a little jittery, the parchment clutched tightly in his hand.
As soon as Ruby opened the caravan door, he stumbled in and began to babble.
“Hariman... He... He... He...Do you know what he did? He did you know! Well, I'll tell you... That's not all... He... H
e... He... Well... You know what he did, don't you? Don't you!?”
“Calm!” ordered Ruby
“But, but, but, not only that... he...” stammered the Reverend.
“Calm!” Ruby repeated, sternly, and silenced him with a raised hand. “Shh!”
The panic-stricken Reverend didn't listen; he gabbled on:
“Ruby, I don't believe I am strong enough for all this Tarot card terror stuff!”
“You must keep calm, Reverend. Keep calm and keep the faith! But right now, I think maybe you'd benefit from a nice, calming cup of peppermint tea. And while it's brewing, let me take a look at that parchment document...”
The Reverend, his hands still shaking, passed it to her.
Ruby started to read, slowly and methodically. The intricately-engraved, heavily-illuminated, shiny black, gold and red letters seemed burned into the heavy vellum, and shimmered before her eyes, so that the words appeared to crawl and writhe suspiciously across the page. She pursed her lips at certain points and sucked in air between her teeth at others. Tut-tutting and clucking, absorbing each line, she reached the end of the document and abruptly removed it from her gaze, as if it were something she had no desire ever to look at again.
Snapping her pince-nez from the bridge of her nose, she shook her head as if to dislodge her darker thoughts, and announced:
“Sometimes the best way to hide things is in plain sight. To leave them right out there in the open. Do you have any idea of what this is? Thank heavens you didn't sign it. Reverend, your soul is in grave peril. This 'contract' is a fiendish pact, of the kind offered Dr Faustus. It is all rather sloppily disguised. Your immortal soul is to be forfeit for some – some petty trinket or other. It may already be too late. Have there been any other gifts or tokens given to you by any of this loathsome trio? Think, man!”
The Reverend turned bone-white and produced a silver and jade crab talisman on a silver chain from his waistcoat pocket. He handed it over to Ruby, who did not look pleased, nor impressed in the slightest.
“Hmm, a crystal communication device... open aura... very crude. Did you know that with this secreted about your person, anybody with a similarly tuned device can 'listen in' to whatever you are doing, wherever you are? I shall keep hold of this hateful little item, along with the parchment 'contract', for my well being as much as yours. Both just serve to indicate that, as I suspected, we are dealing with something a good deal more powerful and dangerous than Devizes and the Nutters... They promised you wealth for the church via horticultural means... a bloom, a rose. To keep track of you they placed about your person, with your tacit agreement, this crustacean bauble. Roses and Crustaceans, Rosy-Crustaceans…Yes… We are confronting something far more devilish than at first meets the eye. Hmmm... How to counteract these unholy articles? We need some insurance…”
Ruby paused, closed her eyes in contemplation a moment, then smiled and snapped her fingers :
“Reverend Phullaposi, have you anything with a connection to St. Michael within your church? It must be old and it must be venerated?”
Puzzled, the Reverend nodded, and described to Ruby the main stained glass window, that there were two angels featured in the panel referring to the annunciation, that certainly one was Gabriel, but the other holding aloft a burning star did seem a little more ‘warrior’ like. If it were articles, then the only things that were relics of the old past were in the safe, however, he did keep a small, aged, portable Holy Communion set near he font, in case of emergencies
“Ahh...Yes, I remember the small set…. And the angel in the window. Most illuminating. Very reminiscent to sumptuous colours and body form arcs from the works of Caravaggio…” Ruby stared into the distance, formulating a plan in her mind.
The Reverend looked as blank as a fresh canvas, Ruby noticed his expression and rolled her eyes.
“Caravaggio,” she repeated, awaiting an affirmative reply from the gaping Reverend.
The Reverend's eyes still didn’t light up in recognition of the name.
Ruby sighed, sipped her tea and looked at the Reverend across the rim of her teacup.
“My good Reverend I believe that you are in need of a little art history. Caravaggio was an immeasurably talented artist, but he was a tragically and violently flawed genius. Don't you see? The artwork to which you have eluded? The whole composition... the fine tonal value of the icon? No? Your church’s wonderfully inspiring stained-glass window. Such sumptuous colours, the reds, blues and purples… It instantly reminds me of the work of another dear departed artistic friend of mine… his name was Derek. Though if you have not heard of the great Caravaggio, I would be enormously surprised to discover you knew dear old Derek. He had the same eye for form as Mr. Caravaggio. He even re-created some of his work, but using photographic means and live models. Do you recall him now, Reverend?”
The Reverend's blank expression still hadn't altered.
Ruby tutted and continued her lesson.
“You do not recall his work at all? No? More's the pity. So full of life... So full of it.”
“Full of it?” The Reverend was increasingly uncertain of where the conversation was now going. He had come to Ruby's for a strategy to deal with Hariman and the others; not a lecture in Art History.
“Yes, he was most certainly full of it and now he's dead... poor chap.”
“Dead... AND full of it?” the Reverend repeated, with growing confusion.
He was sure that Ruby had wandered away from the point, but was wholly unsure of when, or indeed of what the point was in the first place.
“Yes, he was riddled with it by the time he died. He was gifted though. However his reputation did take a small tumble when he was caught... doing something in a public park.”
“Doing... something?” the Reverend repeated, parrot-like, not really wanting to hear the answer.
Ruby continued, now almost oblivious to the Reverend even being there, so engrossed was she in her reminiscence:
“Yes, he was most definitely doing something, and with a camera, if you please. He said he was making an art film about a dead queen; I seem to remember she was wearing a large pink dress, and it was on fire. There was a flag and lots of semi-clad people dancing to syncopated rhythms. In the park. Hmm... An art film. I was never totally convinced, and neither were the local constabulary.”
The Reverend's brain reeled. He had come here out of his mind with worry, desperate for some advice and reassurance that all would work out well at the fête. Instead his head had been filled with a lot of unnecessary information that would in all likelihood give him some very disturbing dreams for the foreseeable future.
He sat there on the settee, perplexed, robotically sipping the peppermint tea and stroking the cat curled up in his lap.
Ruby noticed this.
“Don't stroke him like that, dear, it gives him ideas.”
“Ideas?”
“Ideas. He hasn't been done you know.” Ruby raised her eyebrows, pointedly.
The Reverend smartly withdrew his hand, then, politely but firmly, shooed Tobias from his lap, brushing off the remaining cat hairs.
Tobias skulked off, muttering and mewing, occasionally looking back over his shoulder and giving both the Reverend and Ruby filthy looks.
Slightly embarrassed, the Reverend stood up and brushed himself down.
Sensing his growing discomfort and unease, Ruby suggested that he should return home to his wife, and try to calm down.
“And don't worry! Pearl and I, and our various familiar... associates will be along bright and early tomorrow morning to help you deal with any unexpected or untoward 'excitement' at the fête.”
At the doorstep, she surreptitiously slipped a small envelope into the Reverend's pocket, crossed her fingers behind her back and asked him not to forget the small booth that she would be occupying tomorrow:
“Remember... I am to be 'Gypsy Rose Lee', Fortune teller to the stars and the Royal Houses of Europe. World Famous in Bradshaw!
”
The Reverend looked perplexed; he couldn't ever remember Ruby booking a booth for the fête, but he promised that there would be space for her. Any help to the church roof fund would be gratefully received.
Ruby breathed a big sigh of relief as she shut the door. Tobias looked at her curiously and she shooed him into the kitchen, following him in so she could put the kettle on, all the while muttering, both to him and to herself:
“All right, all right, all right... Maybe I didn't originally book a booth. But we need a base to keep an eye on ALL the goings-on. And as the Reverend said, any funds will be gratefully received. As for the packet I placed on his person? It was merely a crystal that may afford him a little more protection from the malefic elements that are abroad at the present time. Now shut up and eat your fish. I have a couple of incantations to recite in order to empower the gem that I have placed upon the Reverend.”
Ruby filled the teapot, allowing it to brew. She then went back into her main room, brought out a silken cloth emblazoned with a pentacle, spread it over a table, and placed a candle centrally upon it. Near to the candle she placed a small-sized clear crystal. This crystal was the sister of the one she had just placed into the Reverend's pocket. Ruby carefully lit the wick of the lavender candle and, as the glow began to grow, she took two paces backwards away from the table. She stood perfectly still, breathing silently through her nose, calmly, regularly... in... and out, in... and out, with a slow, gently calming rhythm. The crystal began to absorb the dancing flame, as Ruby continued to breath in and out, eyes shut, casting out any negative doubts and feelings...
After a few moments, a small dim ring of light began to grow around Ruby's feet. Once it had joined, the ring began to grow in intensity, and then to rise. Ruby could feel its positive energy flowing through her. The light cascaded around and the pulsating, humming energy filled the caravan and beyond. With every breath Ruby took, the ring rose higher and higher, until it was forming a dome that completely enveloped her, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.
The Dave Hinchy Code Page 7